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Epilogue

Abdulaziz Sachedina

in Islamic Biomedical Ethics Principles and Application

The epilogue undertakes to assess the intellectual exchange between religious communities and medical researchers in the Muslim world for the development of biomedical ethics. The problem-solving ... More

The epilogue undertakes to assess the intellectual exchange between religious communities and medical researchers in the Muslim world for the development of biomedical ethics. The problem-solving method adopted by the prestigious Islamic Juridical Council of the World Muslim League in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, is founded upon searching for normative responsa based on revealed sources only. The Council, represented by Sunni and Shi‘ite jurists, has deemphasized human dimension of medical enterprise by ignoring to evaluate human moral action and its ramifications for Islamic biomedical ethics. The classical juridical heritage, as demonstrated in this study, instead of functioning as a template for further moral reflection about critical human conditions and vulnerability in the context of modern healthcare institutions, has simply been retrieved to advance or obstruct legitimate advancements in biomedicine. Normative essentialism attached to evolving interhuman relationships has reduced Islamic jurisprudence to the search in the revealed texts rather than in theological ethics to estimate human nature and its ability to take the responsibility of actions performed cognitively and volitionally under variable circumstances. Religious and moral empowerment of average human person appears to be out of question for the Islamic religious establishment across Muslim world. It is this lack of empowerment of an individual capable of discerning right from wrong that makes Islamic juridical rulings in biomedicine inconsonant with international standards of human dignity and autonomous moral agency.Less

Afterword: A Physician's Reflections

Harold G. Koenig

in Religion and Healing in America

The description of healing provided in this book has cast a wide net, including much more than just physical healing but also healing in relationships with others, healing in relationship with one's ... More

The description of healing provided in this book has cast a wide net, including much more than just physical healing but also healing in relationships with others, healing in relationship with one's own self, healing in one's relationship with God, and healing on the community or cultural level as well. The focus of biomedicine on the physical alone and the neglect of other parts of the person have improved physical well-being but not their emotional health and spirituality. The resurgence of interest in many forms of religious healing testifies to this failure of allopathic medicine to heal, despite its increasing capacity to cure. Understanding and respecting the unique contributions of allopathic medicine and religious healing systems, each supporting the work of the other in true integration, is what holds the greatest hope for the wholeness and healing of persons. According to physician Ralph Snyderman, dean and chancellor of Duke University Medical Center, a new field called “integrative medicine” will be the medicine of the future.Less

“No Harm, No Harassment”: Major Principles of Health Care Ethics in Islam

Abdulaziz Sachedina

David E. Guinn (ed.)

in Handbook of Bioethics and Religion

This chapter poses the quiestions: how do Muslims solve their ethical problems in biomedicine? Are there any distinctive theories or principles in Islamic ethics that Muslims apply in deriving moral ... More

This chapter poses the quiestions: how do Muslims solve their ethical problems in biomedicine? Are there any distinctive theories or principles in Islamic ethics that Muslims apply in deriving moral judgments in bioethics? Is the sacred law, the Shari'a, which is regarded as an integral part of Islamic ethics, the only recognized source of ethical judgments in Islam? What is the role of human experience/intuitive reasoning in moral justification? This chapter explores these questions and their answers.Less

Understanding Hunger

Devi Sridhar

in The Battle Against Hunger: Choice, Circumstance, and the World Bank

This chapter examines how nutrition is defined within the Bank, specifically looking at the biomedical influence on the Bank's approach to hunger. It concludes that undernutrition is constructed as a ... More

This chapter examines how nutrition is defined within the Bank, specifically looking at the biomedical influence on the Bank's approach to hunger. It concludes that undernutrition is constructed as a matter of choice for households, and in particular, women.Less

Love as an Analytic Tool

Chloe Silverman

in Understanding Autism: Parents, Doctors, and the History of a Disorder

This book examines the evolution of the diagnostic category of autism as people have understood it in different places and times, with a particular focus on the importance of affect in biomedical ... More

This book examines the evolution of the diagnostic category of autism as people have understood it in different places and times, with a particular focus on the importance of affect in biomedical research during the second half of the twentieth century and the first few years of the twenty-first. It considers the degree to which representation of autism depends on particular institutional and epistemological arrangements; shifts the focus from psychiatrists, epidemiologists, and geneticists to parents, counselors, diagnosticians, and lawyers, as they try to make sense of and apply systematic, authoritative knowledge in their daily lives and work; and highlights the centrality of love as a way of knowing about bodies, persons, and relationships in biomedicine. This introduction provides an overview of theories of love in biomedicine, the ethics of treating autism and how it relates to the question of moral personhood, the history of diagnosis of autism, biosociality and contested illnesses, and the book's methodology.Less

Desperate and Rational: Parents and Professionals in Autism Research

Chloe Silverman

in Understanding Autism: Parents, Doctors, and the History of a Disorder

This chapter examines the process of persuasion and affective involvement whereby parents and new practitioners come to take part in the practice of treating autism as well as in research on autism. ... More

This chapter examines the process of persuasion and affective involvement whereby parents and new practitioners come to take part in the practice of treating autism as well as in research on autism. It considers the production of biomedical knowledge in one parent-practitioner community and the ways that social relations based on affect alter vision, create trust, and change measures of therapeutic success. Despite the fact that biomedical treatments for autism are regarded as “alternative” practices, this community does not operate “outside” the forms of expertise and representations of biological systems accepted by conventional practitioners. What makes them distinct is a conscious shift in perspective as opposed to an appeal to a diffrent knowledge system altogether. They are an experimental community within biomedicine, and their treatment practices remain controversial, but parents of autistic children are exploring them at increasing rates.Less

Medicine

G. E. R. Lloyd

in Disciplines in the Making: Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Elites, Learning, and Innovation

Medicine aims to secure health and well-being, but what those consist in and how to achieve them are often disputed questions. Some societies have self-styled experts in the domain, others have none. ... More

Medicine aims to secure health and well-being, but what those consist in and how to achieve them are often disputed questions. Some societies have self-styled experts in the domain, others have none. But even in those that do, there are often rival groups offering alternative treatments and explanations. This chapter discusses shamanism and other modes of traditional healing, the various traditions of medicine in ancient Greece, China, and India, and aspects of modern biomedicine and psychiatry, to bring to light the ways in which different concepts of medicine are developed, and the roles that learned and often exclusive elites played in promulgating them.Less

The Coming of Bioethics

Renée C. Fox and Judith P. Swazey

in Observing Bioethics

Much like other fields of study, the origins of bioethics can be hard to trace, analyze, and interpret. This chapter presents the beginnings of bioethics in the United States, which includes an ... More

Much like other fields of study, the origins of bioethics can be hard to trace, analyze, and interpret. This chapter presents the beginnings of bioethics in the United States, which includes an account of an explosive moment of creation much like the Big Bang Theory as a result of advances in the field of biomedicine, of specific issues, and of significant events. Another perspective on the gradual emergence of bioethics in relation to social, cultural, medical, and political occurrences is also provided.Less

Reproduction of Indigenous Knowledge in Plural Cultures: Ayurveda Education in Contemporary India *

Geetha B. Nambissan and S. Srinivasa Rao

in Sociology of Education in India: Changing Contours and Emerging Concerns

This chapter examines Ayurveda education in India and the reproduction of indigenous knowledge in a pluralist culture. The story of indigenous knowledge systems such as Ayurveda, especially in the ... More

This chapter examines Ayurveda education in India and the reproduction of indigenous knowledge in a pluralist culture. The story of indigenous knowledge systems such as Ayurveda, especially in the last century, has been one of power struggles resisting the authority, prestige, and the hegemonic tendencies of biomedicine, while selectively co-opting the rival’s therapeutic knowledge and practices in order to be relevant and contemporaneous. Today, Ayurvedic education both contests and collaborates with biomedicine, providing an interesting instance of simultaneous reproduction of plural knowledge systems. Contemporary Ayurvedic education raises several questions pertinent to sociology of education (SoE) in India. Having schooled in the biomedical sciences, how do students make the necessary cognitive shift into the Ayurvedic body of knowledge and its conceptual categories? How do modern Ayurveda colleges organize and realize these conceptual shifts and cultural transitions? The author analyses the role of culture in medicine and in education, and describes the educational and cultural processes of knowledge reproduction in the modern institutions of traditional medicine. This chapter also discusses the curricular and extra-curricular strategies used by Ayurveda colleges to address the marginalization of Ayurveda and the dominance of biomedicine. It also considers how Ayurvedic education contests the binaries between two knowledge systems and attempts to counter the power hierarchies ensuing from them.Less

Healing as Resistance: Reflections upon New Forms of American Jewish Healing

Susan S. Sered

in Religion and Healing in America

Throughout the 20th century, Jews had been in the vanguard of Americans utilizing conventional biomedicine and biomedically trained physicians. This chapter seeks to contextualize the still evolving ... More

Throughout the 20th century, Jews had been in the vanguard of Americans utilizing conventional biomedicine and biomedically trained physicians. This chapter seeks to contextualize the still evolving Jewish healing movement both in terms of American medicine and in terms of Judaism. This exercise is particularly important because the Jewish healing movement, for the most part, does not challenge the hegemony of either mainstream medical or Jewish institutions. Practitioners insist that they are about healing rather than curing, and that they are not about miracles or superstition. In contrast to the poor interpersonal relationships said to be plaguing the male rabbinical establishment, the women involved in the Jewish healing movement stress the importance of human interactions.Less

Among Shamanism: Animist Spiritual Healing in America's Urban Heartland

Phua Xiong, Charles Numrich, Wu Chu Yongyuan, Deu Yang, and Gregory A. Plotnikoff

in Religion and Healing in America

The Hmong are an ethnic minority with ancient roots in China. There are now more than 100,000 Hmong refugees in the United States, with the highest concentration in Minnesota and Wisconsin. As the ... More

The Hmong are an ethnic minority with ancient roots in China. There are now more than 100,000 Hmong refugees in the United States, with the highest concentration in Minnesota and Wisconsin. As the Hmong make America their home, their practice of traditional healing—Hmong shamanism (kev ua neeb)—has been particularly challenged by the multiple forces that accompany acculturation, such as the problems faced when individuals are confronted with health care, social services, and legal systems that have no understanding of Hmong traditional beliefs and cultural attitudes. At the same time, the tension between acculturation and traditional beliefs modulates the Hmong's participation in American biomedicine. Due to the dynamic interaction of souls, spirits, and people, and the impact of their interactions on health and illness, many Hmong find Western medicine less than adequate in meeting their needs. Those who do not seek Western treatment will try a variety of traditional healing practices, including shamanism, herbalism, and other home remedies and magic healing. Nevertheless, shamans and shamanism are not opposed to conventional physician care.Less

The Healing Genes

Kaja Finkler

in Religion and Healing in America

At one time it was believed that traditional healing would disappear in light of the great success of biomedicine, especially since religion and religious healing are usually juxtaposed as mutually ... More

At one time it was believed that traditional healing would disappear in light of the great success of biomedicine, especially since religion and religious healing are usually juxtaposed as mutually antagonistic to science and biomedicine. However, recent evidence refutes this assumption. In fact, more than thirty medical schools have introduced courses on the relationship between spirituality and medicine. This chapter examines the religious underpinnings of what is ostensibly a purely scientific enterprise, the Human Genome Project (HGP) and the new genetics that form part of contemporary biomedicine. It argues that ideologies of the HGP, which utilizes the most advanced technology of the times, are sustained by religious ideas based on Judaism and Christianity. Although it may appear that contemporary scientific ideas are far removed from religious beliefs, closer scrutiny reveals that Western religious notions undergird the HGP. The chapter begins with a brief overview of modern society's shift to the secularization of medicine and then turn to the new genetics, which became an integral part of biomedicine.Less

Animal Spirit in Action

C. U. M. Smith, Eugenio Frixione, Stanley Finger, and William Clower

in The Animal Spirit Doctrine and the Origins of Neurophysiology

This chapter discusses the changes and elaboration of the animal spirit doctrine by the foremost biomedical thinkers of the 18th century. It reviews Georg Ernst Stahl's animistic ideas, which were ... More

This chapter discusses the changes and elaboration of the animal spirit doctrine by the foremost biomedical thinkers of the 18th century. It reviews Georg Ernst Stahl's animistic ideas, which were inadequate and moved back to a more mechanistic physiology. It then introduces Herman Boerhaave, who is also called the teacher of Europe. The rest of the chapter focuses on Boerhaave's deep and detailed summary of early-18th-century work on the physiology and anatomy of the neuromuscular system. Finally, this chapter also reviews several relevant figures in 18th-century biomedicine and some electrical theories of the 19th century.Less

Procreating Women and Religion: The Politics of Spirituality, Healing, and Childbirth in America

Pamela Klassen

in Religion and Healing in America

The contemporary home birth movement is rooted in a countercultural critique of biomedicine that, like many other alternative healing movements in America, draws from religious and spiritual ... More

The contemporary home birth movement is rooted in a countercultural critique of biomedicine that, like many other alternative healing movements in America, draws from religious and spiritual resources. Spanning a continuum from traditionalist Jews and Christians to feminist practitioners of Goddess spirituality, these religious and spiritual resources are quite diverse, especially in light of the fact that only a small minority of childbearing women plan to give birth at home. Although these women may have very different understandings of the religious significance of childbirth and different theologies of the body, they do share at least one commonality: they are fashioning their religious interpretations of childbirth largely outside of the context of official, religious institutions. This chapter examines the politics of spirituality, healing, and childbirth in America.Less

Intercultural communication in palliative care

James Hallenbeck and Vyjeyanthi S Periyakoil

in Handbook of Communication in Oncology and Palliative Care

Communication occurs in cultural contexts, which are in turn determined by a host of variables — ethnicity, religion, geographic origin, gender, sexual orientation, social role, and age, among ... More

Communication occurs in cultural contexts, which are in turn determined by a host of variables — ethnicity, religion, geographic origin, gender, sexual orientation, social role, and age, among others. Anthropologist Edward Hall noted that social interactions and associated communication can be broadly classified as being relatively high or low in their cultural context. Low-context communication is task-oriented, emphasizing straightforward, unambiguous spoken or written communication, while high-context communication embeds large amounts of meaning within the actual situation (or context), within which communication is occurring and tends to compress meanings in spoken, written, and non-verbal communication. Current medical training tends to focus almost exclusively on low-context aspects of communication. This chapter provides an introduction to high-context intercultural communication, as it applies to palliative care, and discusses educational strategies for improving related communication skills. It also examines the relevance of high-context communication to palliative care, the culture of biomedicine, ambiguity, compression of meaning, and subtexts.Less