When Listening to the People: Lessons from Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM) for Bioethics |
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Authors: | Monika Clark-Grill |
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Institution: | (1) Faculty of Medicine, University of Otago, PO Box 56, Dunedin, 9054, New Zealand |
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Abstract: | Complementary and alternative medicines (CAM) have become increasingly popular over recent decades. Within bioethics CAM has
so far mostly stimulated discussions around their level of scientific evidence, or along the standard concerns of bioethics.
To gain an understanding as to why CAM is so successful and what the CAM success means for health care ethics, this paper
explores empirical research studies on users of CAM and the reasons for their choice. It emerges that there is a close connection
to fundamental principles of medical ethics. The studies also highlight that CAM’s holistic ontology of health and illness
has an empowering effect on people in caring for their health, and on an even deeper level, safeguards against biomedicine’s
reducing image of oneself as biological body-machine. The question is raised what lessons bioethics should draw from this
emancipatory social movement for its own relationship with biomedicine. |
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