ABSTRACT
This chapter concerns the re-emergence of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) and its likely significance in the overall pattern of health care in western societies. Most sociological work on CAM has taken the concept of medical dominance as a starting point. The British Medical Association (BMA) report of 1986 was widely understood as an attempt to discredit alternative medicine in general. The story of the resurgence of CAM has usually been told from the point of view of the demand side but it can also be told from the supply side. Training in CAM is increasingly available in medical schools and universities in Britain, as in some other European countries and in the USA. Some CAM practitioners have resisted medicine's insistence on the randomized controlled trial as the gold standard mode for judging efficacy. They fear that the price of legitimacy is submergence of their own distinctive knowledge's and practices.
