Tag: legislative alchemy
Legislative Alchemy: Chiropractic 2013
Via the magic of legislative alchemy, chiropractors are already licensed health care providers in all 50 states. Thus their legislative efforts tend to focus on expanding their scope of practice and forcing public and private insurers to cover their services, in some cases at the same rate as medical doctors. Those efforts continue in 2013 with 65 bills impacting chiropractors introduced so...
Legislative Alchemy: Naturopathy 2013
A fresh season of state legislative sessions is upon us and with it comes the ubiquitous attempts by purveyors of so called “complementary and alternative medicine” (or “CAM”) to join the health care provider fraternity. Via the magic of legislative alchemy, state legislatures transform pseudoscientific diagnoses (e.g., “chronic yeast overgrowth”) and treatments (e.g., homeopathy) into faux, but legal, health care. Once the...
Legislative Alchemy: 2012.5
Legislative alchemy, as faithful SBM readers know, is the process by which state legislatures and Congress take scientifically implausible and unproven treatments and diagnostic methods and turn them into licensed health care practices and legally sold products. Previous posts have explored this phenomenon in naturopathy, chiropractic and acupuncture. Our last report on the legislative efforts of CAM providers appeared almost six months ago,...
Legislative alchemy (briefly) revisited: Naturopathy in Vermont and colloidal silver
A couple of weeks ago, Jann Bellamy wrote about “legislative alchemy” in the new year, in which CAM mischief works its way into state legislatures. Specifically, she mentioned the case of legislators in Vermont trying to declare in law that naturopaths are primary care physicians, who can serve as a patient’s medical home without supervision by real doctors. Rosemary Jacobs, whose life...
Legislative Alchemy: The New Year
A new year brings new opportunities for practicing the magic of legislative alchemy, the process by which state legislatures transform implausible and unproven diagnostic methods and treatments into perfectly legal health care practices, such as naturopathy, chiropractic and acupuncture. Different states have different legislative calendars, but many begin a new session soon after the first of the year. This gives “complementary and...
Legislative Alchemy III: Acupuncture
Acupuncture is typically depicted as sticking needles at various points on the body prescribed (inconsistently, it turns out) by charts indicating purported “meridians” through which “qi” flows in the human, or animal, body. However, from one of the many SBM posts on acupuncture, this one by Dr. Novella , we in fact know that: the consensus of the best clinical studies on...
Legislative Alchemy II: Chiropractic
As we learned in Legislative Alchemy I: Naturopathy, legislative alchemy is the process used by state legislatures to transform implausible and unproven diagnostic methods and treatments into legal health care practices. Today, we review how chiropractors are faring in the 2011 state legislative sessions. Chiropractic 101 In 1895, a self-described “magnetic healer,” Daniel David Palmer, claimed to have discovered that every person...
Legislative Alchemy I: Naturopathy
Via the magic of “legislative alchemy,” state legislatures transform implausible and unproven diagnostic methods and treatments into perfectly legal health care practices.[1] Without the benefit of legislative alchemy, chiropractors, naturopaths, homeopaths, acupuncturists and other assorted putative healers would be vulnerable to charges of practicing medicine without a license and consumer fraud. Thus, they must seek either their own licensing system or exemption...