Search results for ""author john s. haller""

Can Evidence Based Medicine (EBM) and Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM) find common ground? A distinguished historian of medicine, John S. Haller Jr., explores the epistemological foundations of EBM and the challenges these conceptual tools present for both conventional and alternative therapies. As he explores a possible reconciliation between their conflicting approaches, Haller maintains a healthy, scientific skepticism yet finds promise in select complementary and alternative (CAM) therapies. Haller elucidates recent research on the placebo effect and shows how a new engagement between EBM and CAM might lead to a more productive medical practice that includes both the objectivity of evidence-based medicine and the subjective truth of the physician-patient relationship. Haller's book tours key topics in the standoff between EBM and CAM: how and why the double blinded, randomized clinical trial (RCT) came to be considered the gold standard in modern medicine; the challenge of postmodern medicine as it counters the positivism of evidence-based medicine; and the politics of modern CAM and the rise of the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine. He conducts an in-depth case study of homeopathy, explaining why it has emerged as a poster-child for CAM, and assesses CAM's popularity despite its poor performance in clinical trials. Haller concludes with hope, showing how new experimental protocols might tease out the evidentiary basis for the placebo effect and establish a foundation for some reconciliation between EBM and CAM.

Read more less

Between the Parliament of Religions which met in Chicago in 1893 at the time of the Columbian Exposition, and World War I, Asian religions and philosophies made a significant impact on the United States, causing a profound change in thinking about them, including their relevance to the present. More so than any other religion, Buddhism became a crutch for those who, in the final decades of the nineteenth century, became disillusioned with Christianity’s claim to superiority over all other faiths. Like so many intellectuals at the time, Carus was seeking a path from the older theologies into a new secular world and its uncertain future. Through The Buddha's Midwife, Paul Carus not only brought elements of Buddhism to the United States, but much of the Western world. This book was written to recount the journey of one of the principal contributors to the spread of Buddhist thinking in American thought and culture. Now, reissued for the first time since its original publishing, The Buddha's Midwife returns to excite and inspire new audiences.

Read more less