Newsletters > Summer 1998 > Who is Qualified to Offer Natural Health Care?, by Nancy Hone

Should natural health care givers be held to minimum standards? How can it be determined who is qualified to offer natural health care? Should they pass a board exam? Should they produce evidence of education? How much education? Should the consumer decide who is good for them or not? Maybe free enterprise is the answer. Could a practitioner produce client testimony that they were helped? Should a peer review be in place? Is it necessary for government to regulate a safe, nontoxic, noninvasive industry? If not, how is the public protected and how can my insurance cover my care?

These last two questions are at the core of the issue. The current thinking, in some circles, is that we must have government regulation, thereby sanction, so that by doing so, standards are set and then the insurance companies would know who to cover and who not to.

The problem remains that the natural health practitioners are a large, eclectic collection of individuals who have sought to educate themselves in a variety of ways, most outside the standardly approved academic setting. Why? Natural health has been in the public domain since the beginning of time. It has been passed down through the generations through oral tradition. It has always been considered safe nontoxic and noninvasive and shared freely amongst the public at large. The cost has remained low and most practitioners consider their practices a spiritual endeavor, an act of love and caring. There also seems to be a unique feature of natural health practitioners and that is that I have never known one that had to be REQUIRED to take C.E.U.'s (continuing education credits.) They seem to have a passion for learning more and more about how to help people and this is all out of pocket expense. No one funds their seminars and books and college courses. This is the only field I know of that has this unusual quality.

So how is a good healer or natural health practitioner determined? With a test or by their results or let the consumer decide? Natural health has a long and excellent record of safety. I think we should be asking a whole lot more questions than rushing quickly for the answers.

For example, why should the field of medicine be in control of the field of natural health? (see medical statute p.1) They are of two different paradigms. The practice of natural health is not the practice of medicine. Is it because medicine considers natural health not scientific and unproven and they must protect the public? Less than 30% of medical practice is considered scientifically proven. In the 1920's science became worshipped so everything not scientific got lost in the dust. We are just starting to emerge from being enamored by science. Is it because of the Flexnor report that mandated all medical schools must teach pharmacological and surgical medicine and any school that taught non AMA approved health/medicine could not get their graduates licensed to practice medicine?

Is it because health/medical care is owned by medicine so only a medical school can teach health care?(see statute p. 1) So then how can it be placed in academia where it would be placed in the field of medicine and be rejected and denied? Coming full circle, then, I ask why should medicine regulate that which they deny?

What happened when the field of medicine rejected it? The consumers still wanted it and it had always been in the public domain, so the lay people nourished, fed it, and spread the word from one to another where it flourished and grew. The people learned anyway they could from books to mentoring to groups learning together. The people wanted it so the lay people provided it.

Now there are groups of people, insurance companies, professional groups and academized natural health graduates who are trying to establish criteria for deciding who is qualified to practice natural health. Is this about monopoly and higher prices or about how to get the word out? Will regulation freeze out all of those people who kept it alive for the academicians to learn it now? Remember, it is safe, nontoxic and noninvasive.

These questions need thought and study and any rush to answer them too quickly and willy nilly will damage the fragility of the natural health community. It is like a fine wine. Pop that cork too early and you have juice, not wine. Or have you made bread and not let it rise or picked a flower before the bud was formed. A seed is not a vegetable. It is the beginning. We are in the beginning. Ask questions. Think it through. We will then have a fine result where we are all free to access all of natural health and practitioners can practice legally.