Colleen Derkatch's Books

Bounding Biomedicine

Evidence and Rhetoric in the New Science of Alternative Medicine

By: Colleen Derkatch

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Bounding Biomedicine

Evidence and Rhetoric in the New Science of Alternative Medicine

By: Colleen Derkatch

During the 1990s, unprecedented numbers of Americans turned to complementary and alternative medicine (CAM), an umbrella term encompassing health practices such as chiropractic, energy healing, herbal medicine, homeopathy, meditation, naturopathy, and traditional Chinese medicine. By 1997, nearly half the US population was seeking CAM in one form or another, spending at least $27 billion out-of-pocket annually on related products and services. As CAM rose in popularity over the decade, so did mainstream medicine's interest in understanding whether those practices actually worked, and how. Medical researchers devoted considerable effort to testing CAM interventions in clinical trials, and medical educators scrambled to assist physicians in advising patients about CAM. In Bounding Biomedicine, Colleen Derkatch examines how the rhetorical discourse around the published research on this issue allowed the medical profession to maintain its position of privilege and prestige throughout this process, even as its place at the top of the healthcare hierarchy appeared to be weakening. Her research focuses on the ground-breaking and somewhat controversial CAM-themed issues of The Journal of the American Medical Association and its nine specialized Archives journals from 1998, demonstrating how these texts performed rhetorical boundary work for the medical profession. As Derkatch reveals, the question of how to test healthcare practices that don't fit easily (or at all) within mainstream Western medical frameworks sweeps us into the realm of medical knowledge-making--the research teams, clinical trials, and medical journals that determine which treatments are safe and effective--and also out into the world where doctors meet patients, illnesses find treatment, and values, practices, policies, and priorities intersect. Through Bounding Biomedicine, Derkatch shows exactly how narratives of medicine's entanglements with competing models of healthcare shape not only the historical episodes they narrate but also the very fabric of medical knowledge itself and how the medical profession is made and remade through its own discursive activity.

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253

Publisher

University of Chicago Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

022634584X

ISBN 13

9780226345840

Why Wellness Sells

Natural Health in a Pharmaceutical Culture

By: Colleen Derkatch

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Why Wellness Sells

Natural Health in a Pharmaceutical Culture

By: Colleen Derkatch

How and why the idea of wellness holds such rhetorical—and harmful—power. In Why Wellness Sells, Colleen Derkatch examines why the concept of wellness holds such rhetorical power in contemporary culture. Public interest in wellness is driven by two opposing philosophies of health that cycle into and amplify each other: restoration, where people use natural health products to restore themselves to prior states of wellness; and enhancement, where people strive for maximum wellness by optimizing their body's systems and functions. Why Wellness Sells tracks the tension between these two ideas of wellness across a variety of sources, including interviews, popular and social media, advertising, and online activism. Derkatch examines how wellness manifests across multiple domains, where being "well" means different things, ranging from a state of pre-illness to an empowered act of good consumer-citizenship, from physical or moral purification to sustenance and care, and from harm reduction to optimization. Along the way, Derkatch demonstrates that the idea of wellness may promise access to the good life, but it serves primarily as a strategy for coping with a devastating and overwhelming present. Drawing on scholarship in the rhetoric of health and medicine, the health and medical humanities, and related fields, Derkatch offers a nuanced account of how language, belief, behavior, experience, and persuasion collide to produce and promote wellness, one of the most compelling—and harmful—concepts that govern contemporary Western life. She explains that wellness has become so pervasive in the United States and Canada because it is an ever-moving, and thus unachievable, goal. The concept of wellness entrenches an individualist model of health as a personal responsibility, when collectivist approaches would more readily serve the health and well-being of whole populations.

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Page Count

270

Publisher

JHU Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

1421445298

ISBN 13

9781421445298

Bounding Biomedicine

Evidence and Rhetoric in the New Science of Alternative Medicine

By: Colleen Derkatch

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

Bounding Biomedicine

Evidence and Rhetoric in the New Science of Alternative Medicine

By: Colleen Derkatch

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.

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Page Count

253

Publisher

University of Chicago Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

022634598X

ISBN 13

9780226345987

Why Wellness Sells

Natural Health in a Pharmaceutical Culture

By: Colleen Derkatch

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

Why Wellness Sells

Natural Health in a Pharmaceutical Culture

By: Colleen Derkatch

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

270

Publisher

JHU Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

1421445298

ISBN 13

9781421445298

Book's by Colleen Derkatch

Bounding Biomedicine

Bounding Biomedicine

Why Wellness Sells

Why Wellness Sells

Bounding Biomedicine

Bounding Biomedicine

Why Wellness Sells

Why Wellness Sells

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