Quote Originally Posted by herb ox View Post
... While I understand the need for quality control and oversight to ensure practitioners of all sorts won't harm their clients, it also seems to me that people (I'll say "the people"!) should enjoy as a basic human right, unrestricted and nonjudgmental access to health care, as well as the foods, herbs, vitamins and so forth required to maintain optimum health in our stressful world....
Can't argue with that. I think that your statement begs the question of whether, in the absence of "quality control" and "oversight," traditional healers (and I am speaking here of practioners who have undergone the same kind of long-term, rigorous training that was common, for example, among students of martial art teachers practicing Die Da medicine, or among apprentices of a classically trained Chinese acupuncturist or herbalist) actually posed a substantial risk to their patients in the first place?

This is a separate question from whether, if a traditional healing modality attains a measure of success against, for example, a contagious disease, and it is subsequently shown that a Western drug, for example, attains a similar or greater measure of success against the same disease, then patients should have access to both forms of treatment modalities?

Best,

Steve