The Growing Interest of Biomedicine in Complementary and Alternative Medicine: A Critical Perspective

Just as various alternative healing approaches, including hydropathy, vegetarianism, and Grahamism, emerged in the early 19th century under the umbrella of the Popular Health Movement as responses to the inadequacies of regular or "heroic" medicine, the holistic health movement as a popular phenomenon first appeared on the West Coast in the early 1970s and quickly became intertwined with New Ageism as it expanded to other parts of the United States as well as other countries, particularly in Western Europe (Baer 2001). [...]of a congressional mandate responding to the soaring cost of high-tech biomedical care and the inability of biomedicine to address many ailments, the National Institutes of Health established the Office of Alternative Medicine (OAM) in 1992 largely to conduct efficacy studies of heterodox therapies and disseminate information about them. The advisory boards of both bodies have tended to be dominated by biomedical physicians and researchers; on the other hand, the National Advisory Council on Complementary and Alternative Medicine includes two naturopathic physicians, two massage therapists, an acupuncturist, and a chiropractor.