It’s All Natural!

Abstract

There are a number of healing practices that belong to the general group of alternative or complementary medicine. A 1990 survey published in the New England Journal of Medicine indicated that that there were 425 million visits to alternative or complementary medical practitioners compared to 388 million visits to traditional primary care doctors. Americans spent about $13.7 billion in 1 year alone on alternative medicine, only $3.4 billion of which was covered by insurance. Clearly, non-traditional medicine is big business and patients are willing to pay for these services out of their own pockets. Although some practitioners of unconventional medicine are trained physicians, many are not. Nonetheless, their patients treat them as doctors and, as we have seen, doctors are capable of killing.