Abstract
Several
United Nations bodies have advised countries to actively preserve
Traditional Medicine (TM) knowledge and prevent its misappropriation in
regulatory structures. To help advance decision-making around this
complex regulatory issue, we examine the relationship between risk
discourse, epistemology and policy. This study presents a critical,
postcolonial analysis of divergent risk discourses elaborated in two
contrasting Ontario (Canada) government reports preceding that
jurisdiction's regulation of acupuncture, the world's most widely
practised TM therapy. The earlier (1996) report, produced when Ontario's
regulatory lobby was largely comprised of Chinese medicine
practitioners, presents a risk discourse inclusive of biomedical and TM
knowledge claims, emphasizing the principle of regulatory ‘equity’ as
well as historical and sociocultural considerations. Reflecting the
interests of an increasingly biomedical practitioner lobby, the later
(2001) report uses implicit discursive means to exclusively privilege
Western scientific perspectives on risk. This report's policy
recommendations, we argue, suggest misappropriation of TM knowledge. We
advise regulators to consider equitable adaptations to existing policy
structures, and to explicitly include TM evidentiary perspectives in
their pre-regulatory assessments.
