Marginal to Mainstream: Alternative Medicine in America - Softcover

Ruggie, Mary

 
9780521542227: Marginal to Mainstream: Alternative Medicine in America

Synopsis

Millions of Americans are using complementary and alternative medicine and spending billions of dollars, out-of-pocket, for it. Why? Do the therapies work? Are they safe? Are any covered by insurance? How is the medical profession responding to the growing use of therapies that were only recently thought of as quackery? These are some of the many questions asked and answered in this book. It describes a transformation in the status of alternative medicine within health care. Paving the way toward legitimacy is research currently underway and funded by the National Institutes of Health. This research is proving the safety and efficacy of certain therapies and the harm or inefficacy of others. While some therapies will remain alternative to conventional medicine, others are becoming complementary, and still others are busting the boundaries and contributing to a new approach to health and healing called integrative medicine.

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Review

"[An] extremely comprehensive, detailed, and well-referenced look at the explosion of interest in CAM."
Annals of Internal Medicine

"A superb dissection ... the best sociological interpretation of [the] subject currently available."
American Journal of Sociology

Book Description

This book explains how research is legitimizing CAM in the eyes of physicians and facilitating its mainstreaming into health care. It explains what CAM is from the standpoint of informal knowledge, based on experience, beliefs and values, and formal knowledge based on science.

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Other Popular Editions of the Same Title

9780521834292: Marginal to Mainstream: Alternative Medicine in America

Featured Edition

ISBN 10:  0521834295 ISBN 13:  9780521834292
Publisher: Cambridge University Press, 2004
Hardcover