Taking stock of integrative medicine: Broadening biomedicine or co-option of complementary and alternative medicine?

Abstract

In response to the emergence of the holistic health movement in the early 1970s and the rising popularity of complementary and alternative therapies, a growing number of biomedical physicians and institutions have embraced complementary and alternative medicine (CAM), often under the guise of integrative medicine. Whereas alternative medicine is often defined as functioning outside biomedicine and complementary medicine beside it; integrative medicine purports to combine the best of both biomedicine and CAM. Some social scientists have argued biomedicine has become more holistic as a result of this development, whereas others suggest it has embarked upon a subtle process of absorbing or co-o..