-
CHAPTER 9 REAFFIRMATION & EXPANSION
- Johns Hopkins University Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
REAFFIRMATION & EXPANSION T o many outside observers the events taking place in California, from the initial public announcement of a merger plan to its implementation in 1962, seemed to signal the first step in the inevitable absorption of the DOs as a group into the allopathic medical profession. Whatever agreements had to be worked out, complete countrywide amalgamation was viewed as a foregone conclusion. There was no possibility that the MDs would continue to let the DOs remain independent or that the AOA could continue to resist the pull of the AMA upon its members. Movements such as osteopathy, homeopathy, and eclecticism , it is generally believed, have a natural life cycle. They are conceived by a crisis in medical care; their youth is marked by a broadening of their ideas; and their decline occurs when whatever distinctive notions they have as to patient management are allowed to wither. At this point, no longer having a compelling raison d’être, they die. While examples of this pattern are not difficult to find in the United States and elsewhere, this type of explanation tends to downplay, if not ignore, specific highly individualized historical conditions. Whether osteopathy would be able to survive the California merger intact or would go the way of homeopathy and eclecticism would depend not upon some deductively arrived at natural law but upon actual social circumstances over time. CALIFORNIA AFTERMATH Throughout the 1950s it was readily apparent that the AMA could not forge any coherent national policy with respect to the DOs. Indeed, if the AMA executive secretary had not ruled that the amalgamation being arranged in California was a local matter and therefore not subject to ac9 tion by the House of Delegates, it is entirely possible that the final agreement would not have been allowed. In succeeding years this lack of uniformity and consistency on the part of the AMA and other significant groups within organized medicine would severely hamper their efforts to obtain what they would regard as a satisfactory conclusion to “the osteopathic problem.” In June 1961, while the California merger was still in process, the AMA Judicial Council delivered a special report on the association’s position on voluntary relations between MDs and DOs. Noting that “there cannot be two distinct sciences of medicine or two different yet equally valid systems of medical practice,” it declared that the changes occurring within osteopathy indicated the desire by a significant number of DOs to give their patients scientific medical care. Because of this, the council said, “Policy should now be applied individually at [the] local level according to the facts as they exist. The test should now be: does the individual doctor of osteopathy practice osteopathy or does he in fact practice a method of healing founded on the scientific basis? If he practices osteopathy, he practices a cult system of healing, and all voluntary professional associations with him are unethical. If he bases his practice on the same scientific principles as those adhered to by members of the American Medical Association, voluntary professional relations with him should be deemed ethical.”1 Many AMA house delegates thought this proposed policy was far too liberal, since it would serve to make the issue of ethical relations subject to the discretion of individual MDs. A number of component societies, particularly those whose states restricted practice rights for DOs, continued to be bitterly opposed to any interprofessional contact and thus were unwilling to support the report as it stood. As a compromise, it was amended to give each state society the right to make the determination as to whether or not its members could voluntarily associate with osteopathic practitioners on a professional basis. In this form, with almost the exact wording of the 1955 Cline committee recommendation, the policy was approved.2 The Judicial Council also urged that local liaison committees, if not already in existence, be established to conduct talks with their DO counterparts, and this was fully accepted. With regard to some states the report noted, “It might be possible to initiate and complete negotiations such as have been and are being carried out in California.”3 To assist the state societies in the formulation and carrying out of their plans, the AMA board created the Committee on Osteopathy and Medicine the following year. 136 THE DOS: OSTEOPATHIC MEDICINE IN AMERICA [3.81.221.121] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 15:17 GMT) REAFFIRMATION & EXPANSION 137 While the AMA was characterized by sharp division within its official...