The medicalization of cancer as socially constructed and culturally negotiated

Sociological considerations of medicalization frequently employ a limited use of the term that focuses on the transformation of social phenomena into issues subject to medical control. Informed by a salutogenic perspective, this essay argues that it is possible to understand cancer as having been medicalized. I show that far from exclusively a biophysical issue, the medicalization of cancer is a socially constructed and culturally negotiated process, with a fairly recent historical origin. While changing social relations of healing have led our medico-centric culture to a near single-minded understanding of cancer as a cellular pathology rooted in biology, Antonovsky's salutogenic perspective instructs that it is possible to understand and control cancer in non-medicalized ways. Indoor radon gas remediation is presented as an illustration of what form salutary cancer control and disease prevention may take.

Older adults' use of complementary and alternative medical therapies to resist biomedicalization of aging

Taking its cue from Estes and Binney's (1989) assertion that individual and subjective views of aging often reflect a hegemony characteristic of biomedicalization, this study assesses the subjective views that a group of older adult users of CAM therapies have of aging, health, healing, and self care. Reflexive sociological interviews with 24 men and women over the age of 55 are used to show how participants use CAM as an embodied means to resist biomedicalization of aging. Four themes emerge as in part explaining the appeal of CAM therapies for older adults: "intergenerational angst"; "iatrogenesis"; "aging as deterioration"; and "optimistic alternatives". In a cultural context in which aging has been transformed into a medical matter, older adults who seek out CAM do so as part of an effort to gain individual control over their aging bodies and health. These findings provide further evidence that older adults have adopted discourses of individual responsibility for health through self care behavior and that the growing trend towards therapeutic pluralism entails both elements of medicalization and demedicalization.

Classification of complementary and alternative medical practices: Family physicians' ratings of effectiveness

ABSTRACTOBJECTIVETo develop a classification of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) practices widely available in Canada based on physicians' effectiveness ratings of the therapies.DESIGNA self-administered postal questionnaire asking family physicians to rate their "belief in the degree of therapeutic effectiveness" of 15 CAM therapies.SETTINGProvince of Alberta.PARTICIPANTSA total of 875 family physicians.MAIN OUTCOME MEASURESDescriptive statistics of physicians' awareness of and effectiveness ratings for each of the therapies; factor analysis was applied to the ratings of the 15 therapies in order to explore whether or not the data support the proposed classification of CAM practices into categories of accepted and rejected.RESULTSPhysicians believed that acupuncture, massage therapy, chiropractic care, relaxation therapy, biofeedback, and spiritual or religious healing were effective when used in conjunction with biomedicine to treat chronic or psychosomatic indications. Physicians attributed little effectiveness to homeopathy or naturopathy, Feldenkrais or Alexander technique, Rolfing, herbal medicine, traditional Chinese medicine, and reflexology. The factor analysis revealed an underlying dimensionality to physicians' effectiveness ratings of the CAM therapies that supports the classification of these practices as either accepted or rejected.CONCLUSIONThis study provides Canadian family physicians with information concerning which CAM therapies are generally accepted by their peers as effective and which are not.

Gullible fools or desperate pragmatists? A profile of people who use rejected alternative health care providers

Much research on alternative medicine seeks to discover why people use practices which orthodox medicine rejects as ineffective: rejected alternative medicine. However, to obtain a sample large enough for statistical analysis, many studies include as alternative health care, practices such as chiropractic or acupuncture which most doctors accept as effective for limited purposes: accepted alternative medicine. The 1994-95 National Population Health Survey shows Canadians who consult rejected alternative health care providers compared with those who consult accepted health care providers have similar incomes, more education, slightly fewer chronic diseases and slightly more good health habits. For both groups, alternative health care supplements orthodox health care rather than being an alternative to it. Two major differences emerge: women outnumber men more than two to one as opposed to being only a slight majority, and usage peaks in Quebec, not Western Canada.