Anthropology

 It is not surprising that the concepts of American biomedicine clash with religious ideologies about health and healing in the United States. This conflict, discussed by Arthur Kleinman in his paper, What Is Specific to Western Medicine? (), is demonstrative of the American dichotomy between secular and spiritual values. This single-minded perspective inherent in American biomedicine is indicative of the importance placed on materialism, often rising to the belief level of religion. Religion and biomedicine in America encompass beliefs from different ends of the spectrum involving the very definition of health and sickness and the importance of the individual contrasted against the societal, world, and universal vitalism.

One way to consider the dichotomy between American biomedicine and religious healing practice is through their range of focus. Biomedicine views the physical aspects of health and sickness with laser-like precision. The roots of this perspective may derive from monotheism itself, as described by Kleinman when he says, “The entailments of monotheism foster a single-minded approach to illness and care within biomedicine (47)”. Religious-level belief in secular rationality and the scientific method also contribute to this worldview of health and medical treatment. Kleinman supports this point when he describes this singular approach, “The development of concepts is toward proof of the validity of a single version of the body, of disease, and treatment (47).” Any dissension to the American biomedical perspective is viewed with contempt, considered incredulous, and treated as “False beliefs by the profession as a whole, not unlike the accusation of heresy in the Western religious traditions (47).” Contrastingly, American religious perspectives derive from belief in multiple supernatural entities, such as God, the Trinity, Satan, angels, and demons in Christianity. This diffused approach to health and healing leads towards a much broader view with a multitude of possible sources for health or disease. A religious approach usually considers balance in physiological, psychosomatic, dietary, and spiritual practices as essential factors in health and healing. Unlike unitary biological causes, imbalances are often non-specific, as Kleinman says, “The source of disease is not traced to a particular organ, but to the disharmony of qi (i.e., Vital power) circulating in the body (52-53).”

           There is further contrast in America between secular and religious ideology in the very definitions of health, healing, and disease. American biomedicine defines health as the absence of disease, while religious concepts consider health as an essential aspect and experience of life itself. The assumption of no value for the individual experience in Biomedicine discounts the religious concept that “Illness involves a quest for ultimate meaning (50).” According to Kleinman, biomedicine practitioners, “Regard experience, at least the experience of the sick person, as fugitive, fungible and therefore discreditable and invalid (49).”  The deeper religious perspective Kleinman describes by saying that Chinese traditional medicine “presents a serious attempt to codify complex, subtle, and interactive views of experience into therapeutic formulations that claim contextual rather than categorical application (48).” Biomedicine focuses almost solely on physical cures, in the form of drugs, therapy, or equipment, while religious healing can involve all of those things, or none of those things, plus many herbs, incantations, songs, charms, blessings, and a myriad of other options in various combinations.  Biomedicine also ignores the possible benefits of the religious “non-specific therapeutic sources of efficacy that are associated with the rhetorical mobilization of the charismatic powers of the healer-patient relationship that persuade patients and families to believe in successful outcomes and thereby create such scenarios of efficacy (51).” 

A third contrast between American biomedicine and religious concepts in healing is the effects of a disease, illness, and healing on the condition of our local community, our society as a nation, and our worldwide human culture. While religious beliefs about health usually consider these expanded benefits and effects as a natural part of the process. Kleinman states, “That illness infiltrates and deeply affects social relations is a difficult understanding to advance in biomedicine (53).” Regardless of the success or failure of religious healing methods, they embody a natural part of the human health system and society as a whole. Kleinman states as an example that, “African healing systems see illness as part of kinship networks and healing as a kinship or community effort (53).”

It is not the case that American biomedicine and religious perspectives are incompatible; it is that the exclusivity of biomedical belief precludes consideration of religious methods towards health and healing. This shortcoming results in potential benefits to patients never getting the opportunity for realization due to this narrow focus and different meanings for health, healing, and disease. Furthermore, there are opportunity costs to the health of our population, our society, and our world by ignoring the more significant aspects of human health. We can be a much healthier and happier country if a way is found to combine the beneficial aspects of both biomedicine and religious approaches to healthy living, treatment for a disease, and healing in the United States.