As I hope I demonstrated in Legislative Alchemy: Naturopathy 2013, below, licensing “naturopathic doctors,” especially as primary care physicians, is a bad idea. Unfortunately, the only people usually interested in opposing their licensing efforts are medical doctors and their organizations. Of course, this allows naturopaths to pretend they are the victims of the evil, Big Pharma-controlled medical-industrial complex which kills and maims vast numbers of people every year. This distracts legislators from the real issues, such as whether they are qualified to do what they want to do (answer: no) and whether people really want an ND to provide their care (answer: very, very few).
I happen to think that legislators should be fully informed about things such as how naturopaths are educated, what they do in actual practice, and what thier beliefs about medical care are. So I created a website to inform them about these issues and to inform the public as well, so they too will be inspired to oppose naturopathic licensing. It also has suggestions for opposing naturopathic licensing as well as additional sources of information and downloads of materials you can use. (I thank SBM’s Kimball Atwood, M.D., for permission to use some of the wonderful work he has done on naturopathy.)
The website is titled, most creatively, “Oppose Naturopathic Licensing!” And you can find it here: http://www.no-naturopaths.org/ If those who value science and the rational application of science to medical care don’t work to stop CAM provider licensing, the spread of pseudoscience and quackery will only increase. And that demeans all scientific endeavors.
