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Is Traditional and Complementary Medicine Ethical?

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Abstract

All forms of health care are associated with ethical challenges. This chapter briefly summarises an endeavour to identify, analyse and make recommendations for addressing challenges that are associated with traditional and complementary medicine (T&CM). This necessitated careful consideration from multiple perspectives, reflection upon what ‘health’ means and comparisons with conventional biomedicine. For many, T&CMs can be regarded as a key component of their ‘resilience toolkit’; when health is threatened, use of T&CMs can help people to respond positively.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The use of animal-based products for medicinal purposes.

  2. 2.

    Community resilience can be thought of as ‘local disaster readiness’.

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Correspondence to Kate Chatfield .

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Chatfield, K. (2018). Is Traditional and Complementary Medicine Ethical?. In: Traditional and Complementary Medicines: Are they Ethical for Humans, Animals and the Environment?. SpringerBriefs in Philosophy. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-05300-0_7

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