ABSTRACT
According to the biomedical model, disease is a deviation from a measurable biological norm. This view, which still dominates medical thinking and practice, is based on several invalid assumptions. Most importantly, the specificity assumption maintains that understanding of an illness is greater if it can be defined at a more-specific biochemical level. According to Maes and van Elderen (1998), traditional medicine is more focused on disease than on health: ‘It would be more appropriate to call our health care systems “disease care systems”, as the primary aim is to treat or cure people with various diseases rather than to promote health or prevent disease’.
