a law requiring all insurance companies to cover the services of licensed alternative practitioners.
1996 The State of Oregon follows Washington's lead and presents voters with the Health-care Freedom Initiative, a plan similar to that of Washington State, but it fails at the polls because of a technicality.
The first-of-its-kind nationwide study of patient perceptions of Chinese medicine treatments is conducted under the direction of the Traditional Acupuncture Institute in Columbia, Maryland.
The first clinical study of the effects of the Chinese herb dong quai on postmenopausal women is conducted by Kaiser Permanente's Division of Research. A record number of volunteers express interest in participating.
Acupuncture needles are removed from the FDA's list of investigational devices, making them accepted treatment devices, no longer considered experimental.
One of the first undergraduate courses in unconventional medicine is offered at the University of California, Davis.
The Asian Diet Pyramid is released.
1997 National Institutes of Health Office of Alternative Medicine and the Office of Dietary Supplements are collaborating to fund research on the benefits of the herb commonly known as St. John's Wort as a potential treatment for depression.
National Institutes of Health panel endorses acupuncture therapy as an effective treatment for certain types of pain, nausea, as a surgical anesthesia, for pregnancy, and to relieve the side effects of chemotherapy. The panel also says that there is evidence that acupuncture may be effective for menstrual cramps, tennis elbow, drug addiction, stroke, and fibromyalgia.
Teaching Alternative Treatments at
Traditional Medical Schools
Eastern applications and Western alternatives have been quietly creeping into the mainstream Western medical practices. Hospitals around the country now offer some form of alternative (the term used to define anything unproven in Western medical terms) choice for patients. Western medical schools are adding integrative medicine courses, for example, blending Chinese medicine with Western therapies, to their once conservative curricula. Therapies until recently considered offbeat and unproven—such as acupuncture, meditation, herbology, energy balancing, spirituality, and various cultural traditions—now complement traditional training. Conservative Columbia University has created the Richard and Hinda Rosenthal Center for Alternative/Complementary Medicine. Harvard Medical School offers students an intensive course on alternative medical practices.
According to information from the Office of Alternative Medicine at the National Institutes of Health, there are more than twenty-six prominent medical schools now offering courses in alternative medicine. Yale School of Medicine, Temple University, Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, Stanford University School of Medicine, Mount Sinai School of Medicine, Harvard Medical School, Columbia University College of Physicians, Emory University School of Medicine, and the University of Virginia Medical School are among them.
FELLOWSHIP PROGRAM AT THE UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA
The University of Arizona College of Medicine developed the nation's first postgraduate fellowship program in integrative medicine. Under the direction of best-selling author Dr. Andrew Weil, the Arizona program accepts board-certified physicians to a course of study that includes acupuncture, herbology, visualization, mind/body techniques, Chinese medicine, and Native American medicine, to name a few. According to materials developed for the program, it was created in response to a growing demand from physicians for instruction in alternative healing practices.
"It is anticipated that this pioneer program in integrative medicine will help document which of the alternative medical approaches to include in standard allopathic practice.... I am personally convinced that many of the interventions studied and used in this innovative program will find their way into future daily allopathic practice. At that time, the term alternative will no longer be appropriate for these techniques and agents. Indeed they will have become mainstream therapy."13
—Joseph S. Alpert, M.D., head of the Department
of Medicine, Arizona Health Sciences Center,
University of Arizona College of Medicine
Goals of the University of Arizona Program in Integrative Medicine
To train doctors to combine the best ideas and practices of conventional and alternative medicine into new cost-effective treatments.
To encourage doctors to research theories and methods of alternative systems of treatment.
To encourage doctors to be role models of healthy living.
To provide integrative medical care for a selected group of patients coming to the university health center.
To develop a model of training that can be used by other medical institutions.
To produce leaders for this new discipline of medicine who will establish similar programs at other institutions and set policy and direction for health care in the twenty-first century.14
HEALING OPTIONS COURSE AT UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA MEDICAL SCHOOL
About seven years ago a group of medical students approached Pali DeLevitt, Ph.D., saying they needed her to teach a course at the medical school. A cancer survivor who had found healing through her own disease and the use of alternative methods, DeLevitt was known for her strong spirituality and her understanding of the healing process. Teaching a course at the medical school wasn't exactly what she saw in her future, but after giving it some thought she developed a curriculum and approached the head of the medical school with her concepts for an alternative healing course. DeLevitt recalls that there was surprisingly little resistance to what she was proposing, so she began teaching what has become an extremely popular elective for fourth-year medical students.
At a healing space she has created in the woods just behind her Charlottesville, Virginia, home, DeLevitt introduces students to drug and surgical alternative options for treating patients and spends a great deal of time helping them get in touch with their own healing and spirituality. As part of the intensive monthlong course, the medical students are required to participate in group meditation as well as commit to make lifestyle changes at least for the duration of the course. They go out in the field and learn from alternative practitioners, where they discover that there are nonharmful herbal remedies that in some instances can take the place of most prescription drugs; that acupuncture, massage, and energy healing can be very effective in relieving pain; and that the relationship between the doctor and patient needs to be very intimate. She says that the students are amazed, often asking, "How come in four years of medical school no one told us about these things?"
"Medical school students get indoctrinated into drug and surgical management," she says. "But rarely do they hear about healing; everything is disease symptom oriented."
Because she requires that students take a Western diagnosis and research how that particular ailment might be treated with alternative methods, the students leave the course knowing that there are treatment options for various disorders. "If a patient comes to you with asthma, it is your role to inform them that they have alternatives to drug therapy," she tells the students. She told me, "These medical students are the vanguard of new healers. A doctor should be able to look at the many possibilities of the human experience and be able to discuss these things with their patients."
"This course changed my life. I will never look at things the same way again. It not only changed the
