Anne Fadiman on the medicine/culture clash

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In the two decades since their arrival in the United States, the Hmong have established themselves as a part of America's ethnic landscape. They've created businesses, festivals, and radio and t-v programs. But perhaps one area in which they've been slower to integrate is medicine. There are just a handful of Hmong doctors nationwide, possibly due to their relatively short tenure in the United States. But Journalist Anne Fadiman points out it could also be attributed to the vast gulf between traditional Hmong medicine and Western medicine. Fadiman followed a California family who had a disastrous experience when their daughter Lia began having epileptic seizures. Her story is told in a new book called "The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: A Hmong Child, Her American Doctors and the Collision of Two Cultures"

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