Soc Sci Med. 2016 Aug 24;170:97-105. doi: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2016.08.037. [Epub ahead of print]
1Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy, University of Toronto, Canada.
2Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy, University of Toronto, 144 College Street (room 514), Toronto, ON M5S 3M2, Canada. Electronic address: heather.boon@utoronto.ca.
3Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto, Canada.
4Department of Sociology, University of Toronto, Canada
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.
Copyright © 2016 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd.. All rights reserved.
KEYWORDS:
Acupuncture; Discourse analysis; Postcolonial; Regulation; Risk; Traditional medicine
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