Michael H. Cohen - Böcker

A third of all Americans use complementary and alternative medicine-including chiropractic, acupuncture, homeopathy, naturopathy, nutritional and herbal treatments, and massage therapy-even when their insurance does not cover it and they have to pay for such treatments themselves. Nearly a third of U.S. medical schools offer courses on complementary and alternative therapies. Congress has created an Office of Alternative Medicine within the National Institutes of Health, and federal and state lawmakers have introduced legislation authorizing widespread use of such therapies. These institutional and legislative developments, argues Michael H. Cohen, express a paradigm shift to a broader, more inclusive vision of health care than conventional medicine admits. Cohen explores the legal issues that health care providers (both conventional and alternative), institutions, and regulators confront as they contemplate integrating complementary and alternative medicine into mainstream U.S. health care.Challenging traditional ways of thinking about health, disease, and the role of law in regulating health, Cohen begins by defining complementary and alternative medicine and then places the regulation of orthodox and alternative health care in historical context. He next examines the legal ramifications of complementary and alternative medicine, including state medical licensing laws, legislative limitations on authorized practice, malpractice liability, food and drug laws, professional disciplinary issues, and third-party reimbursement. The final chapter provides a framework for thinking about the possible evolution of the regulatory structure. This book is the first to set forth the emerging moral and legal authority on which the safe and effective practice of alternative health care can rest. It further suggests how regulatory structures might develop to support a comprehensive, holistic, and balanced approach to health, one that permits integration of orthodox medicine with complementary and alternative medicine, while continuing to protect patients from fraudulent and dangerous treatments.

Is there a place for complementary and alternative therapies in modern health care? One of the transformations facing health care in the twenty-first century is the safe, effective, and appropriate integration of conventional (or biomedical) care with complementary and alternative medical (CAM) therapies, such as acupuncture, chiropratic, massage therapy, herbal medicine, and spiritual healing. Michael H. Cohen discusses the need for establishing rules and standards to facilitate appropriate integration of conventional and CAM therapies. The kind of integrated health care many patients seek dwells in a borderland between the physical and the spiritual. But the present environment fails to present clear rules for clinicians regarding which therapies to recommend, accept, or discourage, and how to discuss patient requests regarding inclusion of such therapies.Focusing on the social, intellectual, and spiritual dimensions of integrative care and grounding his analysis in the attendant legal, regulatory, and institutional changes, Cohen provides a multidisciplinary examination of the shift to a more fluid, pluralistic health care environment.