A contested model for integrated medicine: acupuncture in Iceland

Abstract

One way in which mainstream and alternative medicine can be integrated is documented in this case study of health care in Iceland, based on 5 months of anthropological field work. The situation is one of plural medicine, in which patients must decide for themselves how they will utilize some combination of conventional and alternative medicine, the latter being excluded from the national insurance system. To the extent that medical research demonstrates that certain alternative therapies are clinically efficacious for some diseases, the medical response in Iceland, as in many parts of the world, has been to perpetuate pluralism and to continue to marginalize alternative practitioners. This has been achieved because biomedical clinicians have appropriated for their own use the techniques that demonstrate efficacy. In Iceland this is true for acupuncture, which is now practiced by some physicians. It is recommended that dialogue be initiated to discuss ways in which exclusion and expropriation might be replaced by collaboration and synergism.