"It is anticipated that this pioneer program in integrative medicine will help document which of the alternative medical approaches to include in standard allopathic practice.... I am personally convinced that many of the interventions studied and used in this innovative program will find their way into future daily allopathic practice. At that time, the term alternative will no longer be appropriate for these techniques and agents. Indeed they will have become mainstream therapy."13
—Joseph S. Alpert, M.D., head of the Department
of Medicine, Arizona Health Sciences Center,
University of Arizona College of Medicine
Goals of the University of Arizona Program in Integrative Medicine
To train doctors to combine the best ideas and practices of conventional and alternative medicine into new cost-effective treatments.
To encourage doctors to research theories and methods of alternative systems of treatment.
To encourage doctors to be role models of healthy living.
To provide integrative medical care for a selected group of patients coming to the university health center.
To develop a model of training that can be used by other medical institutions.
To produce leaders for this new discipline of medicine who will establish similar programs at other institutions and set policy and direction for health care in the twenty-first century.14
HEALING OPTIONS COURSE AT UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA MEDICAL SCHOOL
About seven years ago a group of medical students approached Pali DeLevitt, Ph.D., saying they needed her to teach a course at the medical school. A cancer survivor who had found healing through her own disease and the use of alternative methods, DeLevitt was known for her strong spirituality and her understanding of the healing process. Teaching a course at the medical school wasn't exactly what she saw in her future, but after giving it some thought she developed a curriculum and approached the head of the medical school with her concepts for an alternative healing course. DeLevitt recalls that there was surprisingly little resistance to what she was proposing, so she began teaching what has become an extremely popular elective for fourth-year medical students.
At a healing space she has created in the woods just behind her Charlottesville, Virginia, home, DeLevitt introduces students to drug and surgical alternative options for treating patients and spends a great deal of time helping them get in touch with their own healing and spirituality. As part of the intensive monthlong course, the medical students are required to participate in group meditation as well as commit to make lifestyle changes at least for the duration of the course. They go out in the field and learn from alternative practitioners, where they discover that there are nonharmful herbal remedies that in some instances can take the place of most prescription drugs; that acupuncture, massage, and energy healing can be very effective in relieving pain; and that the relationship between the doctor and patient needs to be very intimate. She says that the students are amazed, often asking, "How come in four years of medical school no one told us about these things?"
"Medical school students get indoctrinated into drug and surgical management," she says. "But rarely do they hear about healing; everything is disease symptom oriented."
Because she requires that students take a Western diagnosis and research how that particular ailment might be treated with alternative methods, the students leave the course knowing that there are treatment options for various disorders. "If a patient comes to you with asthma, it is your role to inform them that they have alternatives to drug therapy," she tells the students. She told me, "These medical students are the vanguard of new healers. A doctor should be able to look at the many possibilities of the human experience and be able to discuss these things with their patients."
"This course changed my life. I will never look at things the same way again. It not only changed the way I will practice medicine; it changed the way I will live."
—a fourth-year University of Virginia medical student
referring to DeLevitt's alternative medicine course,
Healing Options, offered at the medical school
The National Institutes of Health Joins the Act
What some have called unorthodox therapies are gaining even more credibility, or at least a second look, even from the harshest critics. The creation of the National Institutes of Health's (NIH) Office of Alternative Medicine (OAM) has spurred this growth. In 1996 the OAM, under the direction of Wayne Jonas, M.D., a family physician with a background in many alternative therapies including homeopathy, bioenergy, and spiritual healing, awarded nearly $9.7 million in grants to ten institutions to conduct research on the therapeutic merits of Chinese herbs, acupuncture, massage, and other alternatives to conventional Western medical treatment. In a hearing before the Senate Labor and Human Resources Committee regarding the Access to Medical Treatment Act, Jonas testified that the OAM is committed to accelerating public access to potentially useful complementary and alternative therapies.
The OAM's leader reports that his office is exploring methods to assess and monitor the results of individual practices of complementary and alternative health practitioners, including practice-based research networks. Jonas has recommended a three-tiered review process specifically tailored to judge the level of risk of particular treatments. He states, "If such developments were accompanied by systematic data collection of selected unapproved therapies, a situation allowing access, assuring public safety, and furthering research could be accomplished."15
The following is a list of NIH Office of Alternative Medicine initial grant awards. Although research in these directions is improving, it is clear how comparatively little is spent on research in alternative therapies.
Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center $29,901
Massage Therapy for Bone Marrow Transplant
University of Arizona $29,585
Acupuncture, Unipolar Depression
University of Maryland Pain Center $30,000
Acupuncture, Osteoarthritis
Medical College of Ohio $26,405
Massage Therapy, HIV-1
City of Hope National Medical Center $30,000
Electrochemical DC Current, Cancer
American Health Foundation $30,000
Pancreatic Enzyme Therapy, Cancer
Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University $30,000
Hypnosis, Low Back Pain
University of Virginia School of Medicine $28,919
Massage Therapy, Post-Surgical Outcomes
Pacific College of Oriental Medicine $30,000
Chinese Herbal Medicine, PMS
Washington University $30,000
Anti-Hepatitis Plants, Therapeutic Evaluation
Pennsylvania State University $30,000
Music Therapy, Psychosocial Adjustment after Brain Injury
Menninger Clinic $30,000
Energetic Therapy Basal Cell Carcinoma
University of Miami School of Medicine $30,000
Massage Therapy, HIV-Exposed Infants
Harvard