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ISBN: HB: 9780226345840

University of Chicago Press

April 2016

264 pp.

22.8x15.2 cm

7 halftones, 2 tables

HB:
£44,00
QTY:

Categories:

Bounding Biomedicine

Evidence and Rhetoric in the New Science of Alternative Medicine

During the 1990s, an unprecedented number of Americans turned to complementary and alternative medicine (CAM), an umbrella term encompassing chiropractic, energy healing, herbal medicine, homeopathy, meditation, naturopathy, and traditional Chinese medicine. By 1997, nearly half the US population was seeking CAM, spending at least $27 billion out of pocket".Bounding Biomedicine" centers on this boundary-changing era, looking at how consumer demand shook the health care hierarchy. Drawing on scholarship in rhetoric and science and technology studies, the book examines how the medical profession scrambled to maintain its position of privilege and prestige, even as its foothold appeared to be crumbling. Colleen Derkatch analyzes CAM-themed medical journals and related discourse to illustrate how members of the medical establishment applied Western standards of evaluation and peer review to test health practices that did not fit easily (or at all) within standard frameworks of medical research. And she shows that, despite many practitioners' efforts to eliminate the boundaries between "regular" and "alternative", this research on CAM and the forms of communication that surrounded it ultimately ended up creating an even greater division between what counts as safe, effective health care and what does not. At a time when debates over treatment choices have flared up again, "Bounding Biomedicine" gives us a possible blueprint for understanding how the medical establishment will react to this new era of therapeutic change.

About the Author

Colleen Derkatch is assistant professor of rhetoric in the Department of English and vice chair of the Research Ethics Board at Ryerson University in Toronto, Canada.

Reviews

"'Bounding Biomedicine' deepens our understanding of how the borders between mainstream and complementary and alternative medicine are drawn and redrawn and illuminates the complex roles that competing forms of evidence play in that process. This book will be of interest to medical professionals, scholars, and practitioners alike" – Lisa Kerنnen, author of "Scientific Characters: Rhetoric, Politics" and "Trust in Breast Cancer Research"

"This innovative book is sure to attract readers from the humanities and social sciences as well as health and medicine. Derkatch weaves together an impressive amount of evidence to support her arguments. Yet she does so in a way that does not overwhelm the reader. Rather, her argument unfolds in such a way that to read this book is more like reading a compelling story that subtly, almost imperceptibly, changes the reader's worldview along the way. This is rhetorical analysis at its finest, and this manuscript suggests a promising future trajectory for the burgeoning subfield of health and medical rhetoric" – Amy Koerber, author of "Breast or Bottle: Contemporary Controversies in Infant-Feeding Policy and Practice"

"Derkatch's 'Bounding Biomedicine' is a valuable rhetorical analysis of how the boundary between conventional and alternative medicine has been drawn, patrolled, and renegotiated. Focusing on the moment in 1998 when the Journal of the American Medical Association and its eleven associated journals published special issues on complementary and alternative medicine, 'Bounding Biomedicine' offers a deeply textured account of how two incommensurable frames of medical practice met. Derkatch's book sets a new standard for research in medical rhetoric" – Susan Wells, author of "Our Bodies, Ourselves and the Work of Writing"