That's not a subtle criticism. So, let me first explain my approach to medicine. Despite the fact that medicine is the focus of my anthropological interests, the analysis always starts and ends with politics. But in any case, one simply can't ignore the relations of power being invoked when a group of 'gringo' medical personnel comes to Latin America to help relatively immiserated rural populations. Ethnomedicine was suddenly seen as a valuable health care resource after several hundred years of colonial demonization and extirpation campaigns, and another good hundred years of biomedical speculation about its medical futility.
Collaboration can take many forms.
And seriously trying to challenge the biomedical personnel along on the trip to think about these local alternative health care resources as legitimate enterprises in their own right. I say uncritically because of the politics involved in ethnopharmaceutical research these days. Indigenous peoples everywhere from Latin America to Africa to Asia have been placing serious demands on ethnopharmaceutical teams for several years now and are fortunately starting to have some success. Asking native informants to provide information about plants with medical value is no longer as easy as it once was, and given a few facts and figures it shouldn't be. And this is in fact what they have consisted of for at least 50 years institutionally with for example the National Cancer Institute, even longer more informally.