From Rivalry to Rapproachement: Biomedicine, Complementary Alternative Medicine (CAM) at Ethical Crossroads

Healthcare Ethics Committee Forum
Vol. 18, No. 3 (2006), pp. 245-263

Against the backdrop of the political intrigue in biomedicine’s ascendancy to orthodoxy, this article examines its contemporary rapprochement with Complementary Alternative Medicine (CAM), in the move toward an integrated medical regime. It also identifies and explores factors underlying the rapprochement, as well as different ethical challenges that face integrated medicine. It argues that a major approach to tackling these challenges hinges on devising just and equitable criteria for evaluating the efficacy of plural therapeutic paradigms inherent in CAM models. This is attainable through a policy that encourages creating public health policy and medical personnel deliberately exposed as part of their curriculum to the philosophical and theoretical features of diverse therapeutic traditions.

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