In response to “May I See Your License?” [Commentary, April 11], I will agree that Western medicine does not have all of the answers and that complementary and alternative medicine have much to contribute to health care. However, if the intent of Ms. Bennett’s commentary was to convince me that alternative health care should not be licensed, her arguments were less than compelling.
Ms. Bennett lumps all complementary and alternative healing arts into one broad category, as if all are equally valid. Then she proposes that licensing would negatively affect access to treatment modalities that “pose no risk of harm to the public.” Alternative healing, in truth, has a long history of scam artists and pretenders practicing on the fringes. Even if one accepted the premise that none of these modalities are harmful—which is hardly a standard that inspires confidence in their therapeutic effectiveness—lack of harm does not mean lack of harmful consequences. If someone is busy getting his cancerous colon cleansed instead of having the tumor removed, the cleansing may itself do no harm, but the delay in treatment could. If a patient spends the family savings on dubious but harmless therapies, then that money is unavailable for legitimate treatment.
Ms. Bennett argues that objective licensing standards cannot be applied to a field that defies “conventional medical boundaries.” She subsequently takes the wind out of this premise by describing an informal network of healing-art practitioners that identify “who is helpful in dealing with different types of issues.” So, apparently even in a culture unbounded by linear thinking, not just anything goes. Why, then, if a hair stylist is required to have a license and meet certain standards, is it unreasonable to expect some licensing standards for those practitioners with the potential for much greater harm (or good)? Ms. Bennett’s answer is that many complementary and alternative practitioners would leave the state. She doesn’t really offer a reason why this would be so—is it because [those who] flee fear scrutiny?
— Cecil J. Clark, RN
Asheville
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