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Randomized Controlled Crime

Postcolonial Sciences in Alternative Medicine Research

Department of Anthropology, History and Social Medicine, University of California, PO Box 0850, 3333 California Street, Suite 485, San Francisco, California 94143–0850, USA; fax: +1 415 476 6715;vadams{at}itsa.ucsf.edu

The ambiguous terrain of ‘fact-making’ in biomedical clinical research is explored by way of an investigation of the criminalization of Tibetan medicine and Tibetan medical practitioners who participate in the global pharmaceutical pursuit of new medical products. Transcultural encounters between biomedical research interests and Tibetan medical practitioners suggest the production of awkward alliances between the state, markets, and measures of medical efficacy on an uneven global playing field. Moving beyond the possibility that a postcolonial science will be inherently hybrid, this paper seeks to uncover the inequalities of such hybrid-making encounters. When ‘medical facts’ must be derived from ‘magical beliefs’ in the centres of biomedical science, the state often intervenes to criminalize practitioners of alternative medicine. But, when profits are to be made on the fact that ‘the magical’ sells in alternative medicine, the state also makes it possible to shift ownership of medical knowledge, sometimes by way of the randomized controlled trial and the pursuit of active ingredients. The possibility of relocating the label of ‘crime’ is explored in this paper by way of an inquiry into processes that enable this shift in ownership, and a relocation of what constitutes medical ‘fact’ versus‘belief’.

Key Words: fact-making • illegitimate magical beliefs • randomized controlled trials • Tibetan medicine

Social Studies of Science, Vol. 32, No. 5-6, 659-690 (2002)
DOI: 10.1177/030631270203200503


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