Using CAM in Calamities: Complementary and Alternative Medicine at Ground Zero

Western medicine is slowly acknowledging the practicality of using healing methods that are effective even though we don’t understand how they work. (Interestingly, we really don’t understand how most of our medications actually work – pay attention to the ads for anti-depressants, for instance, filled with phrases such as “is thought to” and “may.” Yet doctors don’t balk at all about prescribing those treatments.)

In the article “The Roles of Acupuncture and Other Components of Integrative Medicine in Cataclysmic Natural Disasters and Military Conflicts,” Richard Niemtzow, MD, PhD, MPH, Editor-in-Chief of Medical Acupuncture, a retired Air Force Colonel, and current Director of the USAF Acupuncture Center, Joint Base Andrews, Maryland; Wayne Jonas, MD, President and Chief Executive Officer of the Samueli Institute (Alexandria, VA); and coauthors from InsideSurgery, LLC (Wayne, PA) and Samueli Institute present integrative health care approaches suitable for use by emergency responders and rescuers that do not require extensive equipment, facilities, or supplies.

(The full article is at http://www.healthcanal.com/alternative-therapies/56308-should-first-responders-use-acupuncture-and-integrative-medicine-in-natural-disasters-and-battle-zones.html. Note that this article is about the authors and existence of the original article, which isn’t available to the general public.)