zengardens

Zen Gardens by Doctor Rhoads

Will Homeopathy Become Incorporated by Allopathy

in the United States?^©

by George A. Rhoads, PhD

Will homeopathy become incorporated by allopathy in the United States? Will homeopaths become employees of the American allopathic medical system and suffer a similar fate to other alternative health practices? In spite of the flourishing of alternative health practices such as acupuncture, chiropractic, bodywork therapies, herbalism and others, their practices have been destructively altered by seeking a relationship with allopathy. Hence, questions are raised when American homeopaths speculate about a rapprochement with allopathy.

Some disenchanted employees in the American health care industry seek and find alternative healing paths such as homeopathy. Then, their intent turns to bringing the newly acquired knowledge of homeopathy into medical institutions to enlighten allopaths. Alternative practitioners naively assume that the allopathic system will welcome them to practice in the independent manner in which they have been taught in homeopathy school. Somehow, the hierarchical structure and corporate governance that exists for all other practice modalities in American allopathic institutions is ignored. The internal politics of the current health industry dominated and controlled by pharmaceutical and insurance corporations are also generally denied.

As a clinical psychologist, this writer participated in the unfolding of a similar process in the mental health field, dating from the 1970’s. A repeat performance was witnessed in the body work therapy field in the 1990's in becoming an Asian bodywork therapist. The growing concern in the 1990's was that alternative healing arts in the US awaited a similar fate to psychotherapy.

Alternative therapies have different rites de passage from allopathy, especially the training rituals to become expert practitioners in a particular modality. Dynamic psychotherapy, qi gong, yoga and body therapies for example, have traditionally been taught and practiced in an individually mentored relationship with a master. In the case of dynamic psychotherapy this means that an aspiring practitioner needs to have completed their own personal analysis with a senior practitioner. When an adept becomes proficient in their skill and with the master's blessings, one goes off on their own to develop a healing practice in the general community.

From the 1990's bodywork therapists, qi gong practitioners and others turned away from their traditions and clamored to be able to ply their trades in allopathic institutions. The intent was to become franchised by Western medicine by filling out forms, applying for licenses, seeking insurance reimbursement privileges and accepting being ensconced in the medical hierarchy. This writer thinks that the allopathic organizational structure is too closely analogous to military organizational hierarchies, and concludes that it is an inappropriate model for the practice of healing arts.

The impetus to become part of allopathic medicine by these independent health modalities was strong. Practitioners and their guild organizations did not understand how external regulation would be imposed on their enterprises by following the "medical model" (as allopathy is known by other health groups in the US such as psychotherapy). As with psychotherapy, this has predictably fragmented not only the teaching and learning of disciplines but also in the manner in which they are practiced. Particularly insidious is the ploy by allopathy to rename "alternative" health arts as "complementary" and then invite disciplines to get caught in the spiders web of the medical model. "Complementary" is really an update on "ancillary" which is where other health practices such as psychotherapy were subsumed in the past under medical governance. Ehrenreich and English (1973) clearly point out that the translation of the Latin word "ancillary" means "maid servant", and that is the reality for many health practices in medical institutions. Complimentary health practitioners can surely expect to be treated in such a fashion by the allopathic medical establishment if they continue along their present path.

Historical precedents are unknown to naive alternative health practitioners. To illustrate, two examples of the phenomena stand out in the Twentieth Century. Ehrenreich and English (1973) in their small book Witches, Midwifes, and Nurses: A History of Women Healers, report on how the industrial magnates and the AMA conspired to dismantle a range of competing health care modalities in the early 1900’s in America. Rockefeller’s oil scientists had just synthesized the first artificial pharmaceuticals, and the corporate conglomerate used Carnegie employee Abraham Flexner’s research data to captivate state legislatures across the country. Huge sums of money were then spent on their new medical schools. Carnegie was the public figure to disguise Rockefeller’s participation in the plan because of his growing reputation for corporate misdeeds. The outcome was that male dominated drug and surgery medicine became the sole health care modality for the 20^th Century.

More recently in China, Mao initiated a parallel process which continues to this day. Taoist healing arts have been corrupted and industrialized into "Traditional Chinese Medicine" in the name of science and progress, also spearheaded by outcome research data (currently dubbed "evidence based treatment protocols"). This is documented by Heiner Fruehauf, Ph.D., L. Ac., in The Empty Vessel (Summer,1999).

Most remarkable is the quest by alternative health groups to promote legislative action for licensure, to clamor to become participants in research protocols and to petition for insurance reimbursement of services. They will not be dissuaded in spite of good advice and evidence to the contrary, particularly the experience of psychotherapists. Psychotherapists are currently trying to undo state laws, insurance regulation and oppressive evidence based treatment protocols which have effectively inhibited spontaneous and experiential psychotherapy.

One alternative therapy example is chiropractic. The chiropractors have been challenged over the past decade that seeking insurance "privileges" was not in their best interest. They naively assumed that everybody would be accepted on the practitioner panels. The insurance industry clearly states that being empanelled is equivalent to being hired as an employee including the agreement to accept corporate micro-management of the specific enterprise, in this case chiropractic. In one local town, for example, all six chiropractic practitioners applied for insurance panel membership. Only two were admitted. Imagine the bitterness amongst the other four as their patients with that particular insurance coverage started seeing the two chiropractors who were hired to be on the official panel. The secondary outcome was that more and more self-pay patients demanded to be able to defer fees to their health insurance. This had already happened in the field of psychotherapy, and potential clients to this day will not be dissuaded from using their insurance to pay for therapy. They deny that there will be a loss of their patient privacy to the insurance company. They also fail to understand that the insurance company - not the clinician - will be prescribing their treatment protocol based upon actuarial data obtained from biased research studies.

Another group, the acupuncturists, were shocked when their treatment protocols became externally micro-managed as a by-product of becoming insurable. "How could the insurance company tell me how to do treatment over the phone, when they haven’t seen the patient?", the astonished acupuncturist asked. The insurance industry does it with doctors and psychotherapists. Why would acupuncturists be treated differently and somehow not be subject to medical model governance. The acupuncturists are now learning from their own direct experience that everyone receives a standardized statistically derived evidence based treatment procedure. The argument that individual differences will become obscured is drowned out by the authority of science. In this vein and to project to homeopathy's future, "individualizing" of homeopathic remedies will not be possible when working in this kind of allopathic environment.

Alternative practitioners have also been eager to have their work subjected to research protocols to become a partner in the "evidenced based" treatment elite. It is astonishing that they don’t see this as foolhardy, particularly the studies which pit one type of therapy against another. One study of low back pain, for example, had chiropractors go up against acupuncturists and massage therapists. Who will win the battle of the back pain therapists? Who will get the prize of being awarded all the patient referrals? Alternative health practitioners do not generally know about homeopathy's history of being pitted against allopathy with questionable research statistics. For further development of the subject of research validation of health practices beyond the scope of this article see, The double blind, randomized, placebo controlled trial : gold standard or golden calf? (Kaptchuk, 2001). The author does an in depth study of the research model. He pays particular attention to homeopathy's history with outcome research studies, which is much more positive than that which is publicly presented by Allopathy.

How do we psychologically understand why alternative therapists want to become franchised by Western medicine? On the individual level there is a psychological dynamic which could be called "the narcissistic prize fighter syndrome". Most boxers, no matter how unskilled, truly believe that they will not get knocked out the next time they step into the ring. Practitioner groups who subject themselves to legislation, the insurance industry and research protocols also think that they won’t get knocked out.

Psycho-dynamically speaking, on a group level we are witnessing an example of what Eric Fromm called "Escape from Freedom"(1941). True freedom involves grappling with difficult choices, and the human tendency is to want things easily defined and put in order by a higher authority. It would appear to be easier to have the state, pharmaceutical and insurance industry regulate clinical practice. Then hopefully, the higher authority will resolve the difficulties of defining ones' scope of practice and having to develop a clientele on ones' own initiative.

Even as homeopathic schools teach the differences between homeopathy and allopathy, the politics of current American allopathic medical practice are not fully examined. For homeopathy to remain viable and not suffer the fate of other alternative health practices, health history needs to be a required topic of study. Every homeopathic student should have DIVIDED LEGACY: The Conflict Between Homeopathy And The American Medical Association (Coulter, 1973 ) and Witches, Midwifes and Nurses: A History of Women Healers (Ehrenreich and English, 1973) in their personal libraries. They should also be familiar with Rockefeller Medicine Men: Medicine and Capitalism in America (Brown, 1979). In an ideal future, this writer would not want to be hearing students and new practitioners seeking to work in pharmaceutical and insurance corporation controlled allopathic institutions. Instead, could we be looking forward to the day of practitioners seeking to have independent practices in relationship with a community of like minded healers of varied disciplines?

There are also practical political remedies in the real world to promote the flourishing of independent health practices such as homeopathy. Support for the "Health Freedom" political movement stands out as the most viable solution. Laws have already been passed in California, Idaho, Louisiana, Minnesota Oklahoma, and Rhode Island to protect the work of practitioners who are not under the jurisdiction of the allopathic medical model. These laws take the power away from the insurance and pharmaceutical industry to be able to dictate health care practice to consumers. The idea is to make health care consumer oriented, which will put the power in the hands of individuals to choose their own form of health practice for themselves. Enlightened consumers could be expected to make good choices for their own health care, such as selecting homeopathy. More on this topic is discussed in Impossible Cure: The Promise of Homeopathy (Lansky, 2003).

References:

Brown, E. Richard, (1979). Rockefeller Medicine Men: Medicine and Capitalism in America. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Coulter, H. L. (1973). DIVIDED LEGACY: The Conflict Between Homeopathy And The American Medical Association. Berkeley: North Atlantic Books.

Ehrenreich, B. & English, D. (1973). Witches, Midwifes and Nurses: A History of Women Healers. New York: The Feminist Press.

Fromm, Eric. (1941). Escape from Freedom. New York: Rinehart

Kaptchuk, T. (2001). The double blind, randomized, placebo controlled trial: gold standard or golden calf? Journal of Clinical Epidemiology , 54, 541 - 549

Lansky, Amy L., (2003). Impossible Cure: The Promise of Homeopathy. Portola Valley: R.L. Ranch Press.

about Dr. Rhoads:

George A. Rhoads, PhD is a licensed psychologist in Massachusetts. He has practiced various Asian health arts since 1970 and is qualified in Jin Shin Do® - a recognized style of Asian bodywork therapy. He is currently a student at The British Institute of Homeopathy (BIH) and on the Board of Directors of Health Freedom Action Massachusetts.