Complementary medicine/CMT101/Growth, commodification & 'big business'

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Growth, commodification and big business

The overall field of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) and the associated use of complementary medicines (CMs) have been increasing in popularity in Australia since the 1970s. An estimated 70-80% of the world's population now use complementary medicines of some kind. In Australia, spending on complementary medicines increased by more than 100% between 1996 and 2004. Please listen to this short lecture about the growing popularity of CAM and CMs (handout available here Explaining the popularity of complementary medicine.pdf )





Commodification

As discussed in the lecture, values such as wellness, natural and holistic are now viewed as commodities which can be bought or sold. Complementary medicines are often viewed as being part of the wellness industry and wellness is big business. This diagram from the Global Wellness Institute provides some information about their definition of the wellness industry, and of the different aspects that it covers, from healthy eating, CAM and spas, to beauty and anti-ageing products and 'wellness lifestyle real estate'.


Global wellness industry


Complementary Medicines are Big Business

Complementary medicines are big business. Any trip to the supermarket or pharmacy will give you the chance to see this for yourself as you walk down long shopping aisles of products. Many of the products are now produced by multinational companies. Some brands such as Blackmores have themselves become large diverse companies. Blackmores was started by naturopath Maurice Blackmore in 1930, and was jointly owned by a group of naturopaths and the Blackmore family until it was publicly listed in 1985. Maurice's son Marcus remains very involved in the company. Other companies, also started by passionate advocates, have been bought out by global conglomerates. A recent example is Pukka Herbs, the popular UK herbal tea company which made its name based on ethical principles of ecological sustainability and fair trade, was recently bought by global giant Unilever, one of the biggest consumer product companies in the world. Closer to home, Swisse (originally Suisse) products started in small Melbourne bakery in the 1970s and in 2017 the company was sold to a Hong Kong company for almost $1.7b. Some other natural product brands are owned by pharmaceutical companies, for example Sanofi one of the world's largest pharmaceutical companies, owns Nature's Way, Bioorganic and Cenovis;Alticor the parent company of Amway (the multi-level marketing company), owns a controlling share of Metagenics.


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Reading

Coulter ID, Willis EM. The rise and rise of complementary and alternative medicine: a sociological perspective. MJA. 2004;180:587-9.



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Course Feed Discussion
  1. After listening to the lecture and reading the article, you are probably thinking about the reasons why you do (or do not ) use complementary medicines. List those reasons and think about how well they do (or do not) align with the possible explanations presented in the lecture.
  2. What are your thoughts on the big business side of CMs? Is this a positive or a negative change?


Share your thought on the course feed

Note: Your comment will be displayed in the course feed.




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