Future Medicine

Contents

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Acknowledgments

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pp. ix-x

I thank Karen Adams, M.D., Joseph Finns, M.D., Bridget Guerrera, Kaptchuk, O.M.D., Kathi Kemper, M.D., Lisa Sjostrom, and Malcolm Riley for reading early drafts of the manuscript and providing insightful and encouraging comments; Maureen Foye, R.N., and Peter Faust, L.Ac., for supportive friendship; David M. Eisenberg, M.D., for being a...

Introduction

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pp. 1-26

In the late nineteenth century, the rise of scientific medicine (or bio-medicine) brought ideological and professional coherence to healthcare; standards for safe, effective, and ethical practice; educational rigor; and recognized parameters for research into the validity of therapies. Biomedicine also provided a clearly articulated framework for...

1. A New View of Nonmaleficence

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pp. 27-58

A fifty-two-year-old woman is referred by her naturopath to a medical doctor for evaluation of an abnormal pap smear. Cervical biopsies reveal a premalignant condition, which, if left untreated, can progress and create lesions. The physician’s recommendation is a hysterectomy, to be sure all the abnormality is removed. ...

2. Referral Strategy and the Ethics of Integration

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pp. 59-80

A physician is treating a patient for cervical cancer with chemotherapy, radiation, and other conventional therapies. The patient requests a referral to a licensed acupuncturist, as she has read an article in a popular health magazine noting that acupuncture is effective in reducing nausea and other symptoms of ...

3. Ascending the Hierarchy of Regulatory Needs

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pp. 81-126

A terminally ill patient seeks access to nutritional supplements that claim to reverse his disease. Because the label on these supplements has made an unapproved “disease claim”—linking the supplement to cure of a specific disease—the federal FDA has declared the supplements to be “new drugs” that cannot be distributed in interstate commerce without FDA approval. Pending ...

4. Energy Healing and the Biofield

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pp. 127-166

An attorney telephoned for the following consultation: “I represent a licensed physical therapist. The physical therapist has been treating a client for a sports injury; the client also is seeing a psychiatrist for emotional dysfunction. The physical therapist has taken some weekend workshops in Reiki. While using traditional physical therapy techniques to help the client regain flexibility ...

5. Touch, Privacy, and Intuitive Information

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pp. 167-212

After the conference, we went snorkeling. The ocean waters were rough, impatient, demanding. The schools of fish beneath our man-made fins seemed unruffled by the back-and- forth currents that assailed us. ...

6. Fraud, Ego, and Abuse of Spiritual Power

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pp. 213-250

In health care ethics based on Christianity, the figure of Jesus is regarded as a model, as he “healed before he preached, and he went out to the lepers, the most neglected members of the community.”¹ But the purpose of this memorandum is to suggest how, from a limited perspective of fraud control, a religious healer could be perceived as a dangerous and subversive agent of darkness. ...

7. Beyond Living and Dying

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pp. 251-276

Phil is dying of bladder cancer. He is eighty-five years old, and his vital signs are declining. Phil’s wife understands from all the physicians that Phil is dying; his son, however, continues to insist that Phil will improve and that they soon will be playing golf again together. ...

8. Reproductive Technologies and Spiritual Technologies

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pp. 277-304

In his declining years, Abraham prays for a miracle to help ease his wife’s old age. God tells Abraham that his seventy-year- old wife, Sarah, will have at least six children: “Although you will be back with Me at that point, your wife will face ethical choices, and her soul will continue to grow during her remaining days on earth.” Six months later, Abraham has passed. Thanks to a ...

Conclusion

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pp. 305-318

The power to bless and the power to curse: the same energy can be used for creation or destruction. I may be a healer, but I am still on the soul’s journey. Is falling off center not universal? Did Jesus not weep in the garden of Gethsemane, and did he not ask, “Father, why have you forsaken me?” When they spat on him and the crown of thorns dug into his skull, did he not bless them and pray ...

Notes

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pp. 319-350

Index

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pp. 351-359