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Alternative Medicine and Ethics pp 43–95Cite as

Understanding the Integration of Alternative Modalities into an Emerging Healthcare Model in the United States

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Part of the book series: Biomedical Ethics Reviews ((BER))

Abstract

Progress in the last 100 years or so in the field of medicine has served us well, particularly in the treatment of communicable diseases, trauma, and surgically correctable conditions. However, the current healthcare system has become extremely technocratic, depersonalizing, expensive and unable to deal with the chronic disease crisis the United States is facing. The hundreds of billions of dollars poured into the biomedical model-based research in the hope of finding “magic bullet” solutions has been largely unsuccessful, but the system still continues to invest billions in the model.

The report, “Healthy People 2000” by the US Department of Health and Human Services recommends the need to completely revamp the current approaches to healthcare. It enumerated the challenges and goals for improving the nation’s collective health by concluding that health of people is measured by more than death rates. It comes from improved quality of life and reducing suffering, illness, and disability. It calls for investigating “alternatives ” to current “disease care” approaches.

Complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) modalities, largely derived from early systems of medicine, with their emphasis on mind—body—consciousness approaches to healthcare, may serve us well as a starting point of the revamping process. A large percentage of the US population, frustrated with the ineffectiveness of the biomedical model-based healthcare system to take care of their problems of chronic diseases in a humane way, is using CAM modalities with or without conventional therapies. Healthcare economics, public demand, and political recognition of CAM modalities are forcing the medical establishment, the hospitals, healthcare-maintenance organizations, and medical- educational institutions to relax their stand against the use of CAM modalities.

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Authors
  1. Vimal Patel Ph.D.
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Georgia State University, Atlanta, Georgia, USA

    James M. Humber  & Robert F. Almeder  & 

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Patel, V. (1998). Understanding the Integration of Alternative Modalities into an Emerging Healthcare Model in the United States. In: Humber, J.M., Almeder, R.F. (eds) Alternative Medicine and Ethics. Biomedical Ethics Reviews. Humana Press, Totowa, NJ. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4757-2774-6_2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4757-2774-6_2

  • Publisher Name: Humana Press, Totowa, NJ

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-61737-037-3

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