Disadvantages Of Biomedicine

People across every culture seek to treat illness in a certain way, and everyone wants to be reasonably healthy. In order to achieve a positive health outcome, some cultures seek to invoke the supernatural, or surround their treatment of an individual’s illness with an elaborate ritual (Messinger, 22Jan18). While every medical system is considered ethnomedicine, biomedicine stands apart (Messinger, 22Jan18). Many people are injured every year in the United States, and are forced to work within the biomedical framework that exists in this country. While the biomedical approach has many benefits, it does not always capture the whole picture of an illness. Biomedicine seeks to treat illnesses that are interior to the body, that is, that the illness is to be

However, entering a different culture with differing values and ideas can be difficult. A society may have placed a superstitious belief around a disease, and have come up with a therapeutic way to treat such a disease. For example, on the Torres Strait Expedition, WHR Rivers had observed some locals performing abdominal massages in order to cure chronic constipation, thought to be caused by an octopus in the gut (Messinger, 8Jan18). Rivers noted that through trial and error, the locals were able to therapeutically treat someone of their illness, by removing the spiritual or metaphysical octopus (Messinger, 8Jan18). Another way that locals can clash with biomedicine is that they could feel ill because they have been cursed, or someone gave them the evil eye. So, something that biomedical experts say is non-existent, is a very real illness to another culture. This then ties back into biomedicine simply treating what is biologically proven to be wrong within a person’s