What Is Specific to Biomedicine?

Abstract This chapter discusses biomedicine, which is different from most other healing systems, such as the wide range of local healing activities described by ethnographers. The discussion centers mostly on the biomedicine of knowledge creators—teachers, researchers, textbook authors, etc.—and of the high-technology tertiary care institutions that dominate medical training and which represent high status in the profession. The chapter also tries to emphasize the scientific paradigm that is at the center of biomedicine's knowledge-generating and training system.