"Integrating
East Asian Medicine into Contemporary Healthcare"
edited by Hugh MacPherson, Richard Hammerschlag, George
Lewith and Rosa Schnyer.
Traditional East Asian healthcare systems have
moved rapidly from the fringes of healthcare systems in the West towards
the centre over the past 50 years. This change of status for traditional
medicines presents their practitioners with both opportunities and
challenges as the focus shifts from one of opposition towards one of
integration into biomedically dominated healthcare systems.
"Integrating East Asian Medicine into
Contemporary Healthcare" examines
the opportunities and challenges of integrating East Asian medicine into
Western healthcare systems from an interdisciplinary perspective. Volker
Scheid and Hugh MacPherson bring together contributions from acknowledged
experts from a number of different disciplines - including clinical
researchers, Chinese Medicine practitioners, historians, medical
anthropologists, experts in the social studies of science, technology and
medicine - to examine and debate the impact of the evidence-based
medicine movement on the ongoing modernization of East Asian medicines.
The book considers the following questions:
What are the values, goals and ethics implicit
within traditional East Asian medical practices?
What claims to effectiveness and safety are made by East Asian medical
practices?
What is at stake in
subjecting these medical practices to biomedical models of evaluation?
What constitutes best
practice? How is it to be defined and measured?
What are the ideologies and politics behind the process of integration
of East Asian medical practices into modern health care systems?
What can we learn from a variety of models of integration into
contemporary healthcare?
From
the Foreword byTed
J. Kaptchuk, Harvard
Medical School, Boston, USA:
My
sense is that the goal of the volume is to promote discussion and
open new space for readers to ponder important, deep and complex
issues. The
volume asks critical questions that are necessary for deliberate and
careful integration of the East into the West.
The volume assumes that medical facts, medical practice,
knowledge of "what works" and theories of healing are
embedded in complex cultural and social discourse.
Instead of simple answers, it brings the reader into the
heart of conundrums. This
honest openness is a positive omen demonstrating that scholars and
practitioners of East Asian medicine are ready to work together and
grapple with hard questions.
Besides being a good sign for the West, this volume has a
promise for the East. For
the first time in East Asian medical history, it will be possible to
compare Chinese, Korean, Japanese and Vietnamese variants and
interpretations in the context of critical input from western
scholars and practitioners.
Such a dialogue will not eliminate complexity and
uncertainty, but will undoubtedly make for a revitalized and
genuinely cosmopolitan version of East Asian medicine.
The scholars and practitioners in this volume are brave
pioneers in the current East-West and North-South encounters that
hold the promise to transform East Asian medicine from a regional
medicine to a world medicine. The
integration of East and West depends on the kind of honesty and
creativity that is displayed in this volume.
This book was edited by Professor Volker Scheid, University of Westminster,
London, UK and Dr Hugh MacPherson, Senior Research Fellow, Department
of Health Sciences, University of York, York, UK.
This book is available direct from
the publisher at:
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/bookdescription.cws_home/713776/description#description
