The Role of Complementary and Alternative Medicine

Accommodating Pluralism

Daniel Callahan

• Publisher: Georgetown University Press
• Year: 2001
• ISBN:
  9781589014640
• Topic: Medicine
• Subtopic: Ethics in Medicine

At the center of the debate over complementary and alternative medicine—from acupuncture and chiropractic treatments to homeopathy and nutritional supplements—is how to scientifically measure the effectiveness of a particular treatment. Fourteen scholars from the fields of medicine, philosophy, sociology, and cultural and folklore studies examine that debate, and the clash between growing public support and the often hostile stance of clinicians and medical researchers.

Proponents and critics have different methodologies and standards of evidence—raising the question of how much pluralism is acceptable in a medical context—particularly in light of differing worldviews and the struggle to define medicine in the modern world. The contributors address both the methodological problems of assessment and the conflicting cultural perspectives at work in a patient's choice of treatment. Sympathetic to CAM, the contributors nonetheless offer careful critiques of its claims, and suggest a variety of ways it can be taken seriously, yet subject to careful scrutiny.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Contents
• Introduction
• Assessments of Efficacy in Biomedicine: The Turn toward Methodological Pluralism
• CAM and Cultural Diversity: Ethics and Epistemology Converge
• The Role of Science in Assessing Conventional, Complementary, and Alternative Medicines
• Personal Experience, Popular Epistemology, and Complementary and Alternative Medicine Research
• The Placebo Effect: Implications for the Study and Practice of Complementary and Alternative Medicine
• Spirituality in Clinical Care: A Brief Review of Patient Desire, Physician Response, and Research Opportunities
• Interpreting Results from Randomized Clinical Trials of Complementary/Alternative Interventions: The Role of Trial Quality and Pre-trial Beliefs
• Evidence, Ethics, and the Evaluation of Global Medicine
• The Nature of Evidence in Complementary and Alternative Medicine: Ideas from Trials of Homeopathy in Chronic Headache
• Medical Culture and CAM Culture: Science and Ritual in the Academic Medical Center
• The Quest for Holism in Medicine
• Contributors
• Index