CA law

[Guest guest]

Alon

The old clause said, "herbs as dietary supplements to promote health"

has been amended to include the words "maintain and restore health."

"Restoring health" may be legally permissible wording, but it seems

to mean the same thing as treating illness in my mind. Whose health

does one restore but those who are ill? I suppose it will remain

to the courts to interpret this and it would not be the first time that

CA law has butted up against a federal agency (like pulling the DEA number

of docs who prescribe medical pot). But it would seem that if someone

comes to me and says they have hep C, what can I do? I can now say

I have herbs that will help to restore your health. I couldn't say

that before.

 

-- ,

 

 

FAX:

 

[Guest guest]

Restoring health" may be legally permissible wording, but it seems to mean the same thing as treating illness in my mind.

>>>>I agree but legally its very different. restore health is a generic term, treat disease a specific term and can be done only with FDA approved medicines.

Alon

[Guest guest]

, " ALON MARCUS " <alonmarcus@w...> wrote:

restore health is a generic term, treat disease a specific term and

can be done only with FDA approved medicines.

> Alon

 

Nevertheless, it allows me to tell my patients that I can use herbs to

make them better. Technically, a health food store clerk or HHP cannot

do that.

 

[Guest guest]

 

 

This thread provokes a number of thoughts.

One thing that I think we should extract

from it and consider is the relationship

between language, law, and medical practice.

 

In the early 1970's, when I first started

studying Chinese medicine, there were no

laws and the language surrounding the practice

emerged from several sources. One of course

was the mouths of our teachers. The other

was the very few books that existed in those

days that we could read in English while

we struggled to understand even a single

word of the Chinese.

 

In talking to patients and therefore to

each other about what it was that we imagined

ourselves to be doing by sticking needles

into people and giving them twig soup to

drink, we had to bear in mind that if we

appeared to be practicing medicine, we

obviously were doing so without a license

as there were no licenses to do these

sorts things as medical treatments in

those days.

 

So we dreamed up other ways of describing

what we were doing. Those dreams were based

upon what we understood our teachers to

have told us and showed us and what little

information we could glean from the written

sources to which we had access.

 

But the point here is that these dreams about

Chinese medicine were formed

in order to deal with the pressure brought

to bear on the study and practice of the subject

by the law. With the change of status of

this subject with respect to the law that has

occurred over the past thirty years or so,

this pressure has changed, but it has not gone

away, as your posts testify.

 

It seems that the practice of Chinese medicine

is still being pushed around by the law in ways

that at least some find uncomfortable.

 

I think a lot of the solutions that were

developed to deal with such pressures back

in the early days of the professionalization

of Chinese medicine...at least in southern

California where I was living at the time...

remain firmly rooted in the structures that

still exist.

 

The first I ever heard of " energy balancing " was

in conversations taking place between some of

California's earliest non-Chinese acupuncturists

who were solving the problem of what to tell their

" patients " they were doing. This was not primarily

to attend to the important dynamic of communication

between doctor and patient, it was to obscure the

actual intent so that it could not be " mistaken "

for treatment of a disease, which invoked the

legal liabilities or their potential.

 

I bring this up because I think it's an interesting

and important dynamic that comes to bear on the

process of study and practice and the ongoing

transmission of the subject. I believe it also

suggests from yet another perspective that the

study of the nomenclature of Chinese medicine

is indispensable to those who seek to be not

merely well educated but well prepared to deal

with the issues that result from the character

of the legal environment and its influence on

the practice of clinical medicine.

 

The way to prevent being defined and redefined

by legislators is to disseminate reliable knowledge

of the integral meanings throughout the community.

 

Ken