Today, traditional medical knowledge and practice in the United States are modeled
after and depend upon the biomedical sciences and the technology derived from
them. Although the biomedical model is responsible for the “miracles” of modern
medicine, it often leaves many patients disenfranchised with the American healthcare
system. “In spite of remarkable advances in medical therapy and in development of
fantastic diagnostic devices,” observes Franz Ingelfinger, “American society
appears increasingly disenchanted with the physician” (1978, p. 942).1 This disenchantment
with modern medicine is based on “the delivery of [medical] care [that]
has become more institutionalized and depersonalized” (Glick, 1981, p. 1037).2
Again, David Weatherall claims that “the art of medicine, in particular the ability
of doctors to care for their patients as individuals, has been lost in a morass of
expensive high-technology investigation and treatment…In short, modern scientific
medicine is a failure” (1996, p. 17). The overly enthusiastic appropriation of the
biomedical model, especially in the United States, has precipitated over the past
several decades a perceived quality-of-care crisis on the part of patients, as well as
many within the healthcare system itself.3