Friday, July 28, 2000 | 4:07 a.m.
Public meetings
The Nevada State Board of Medical Examiners will hold public meetings this week on proposed regulations that would allow traditional medical practioners to use alternative treatments.
It was no accident that in 1997, Naturopathic Doctor Beverlee Cannon and her husband, Ivan, chose an empty storefront on Rancho Lane for their Ayurvedic Living Center. The building was located just a stone's throw from the University of Nevada Medical Center on West Charleston Boulevard. "It's perfect, because we're right next to allopathic (traditional medical) practitioners. I think they go hand-in-hand," Cannon said.
Even three years ago though, local medical licensing agencies weren't so sure that a husband/wife team who spent four months of meditative study in the Valley of the Saints, Rishikesh, India, in 1969, had much in common with a modern medical training institute.
It was only after what Cannon calls "a long fight" that the city of Las Vegas conceded that her 30-plus years experience in ancient Vedic studies and four years of study in naturopathy merited appropriate licenses.
But with more and more people turning to alternative cures for age-old woes, even when they are forced to pay out-of-pocket for those services -- and a recent Internet poll indicated that two-thirds of Americans have done just that, spending nearly $27 billion of their own money on alternative therapies in 1997 alone -- the mainstream medical community has begun taking steps to answer to the clamor for unconventional prescriptions for health.
On Thursday the Nevada State Board of Medical Examiners will hold the first of two public workshops to consider new regulations that would "open the door a little bit" to the practice of integrative and complementary medicine. "Most of these physicians have been asked these things and we want to give the public what (it) wants," said Arne Rosencrantz, president of the state board. "We want what's good for the people of Nevada."
But with reports in the national media of deaths attributed to the failures of alternative medicine, as well as other less sensational, but still damaging criticisms, federal regulators intend to move thoughtfully, and deliberately.
"The medical board is there fundamentally to protect the public, so we always have in the back of our mind the physician's charge to do no wrong," said Dale Austin, deputy executive vice president of the Federation of State Medical Boards. "But the reality is, you can take nearly every nonconventional medicine and you can make a case for when it's inappropriate, maybe even damaging, and you can take another case where it's helpful."
Austin says that the recurring theme at state medical boards across the country has been "rather than say 'absolutely not,' to adopt more of a progressive nature as to how to integrate alternative therapies into more traditional practice."
Still, some alternative practitioners see a threat in that proposed integration. "We are feeling they want to absorb us," said Ester Phelps, a licensed naturopath with an office on East Charleston Boulevard. "They are losing patients. (Patients) are going only for the diagnosis."
Phelps, who worked as a traditional medical practitioner in the Dominican Republic before moving to the United States in 1989, says many of her approximately 300 patients go to conventional practitioners for their diagnoses because the consultation is covered by insurance, but come to her for the prescribed treatment.
She suggested that it is lost revenue, not a desire to provide individualized care, that is motivating conventional practitioners.
For her part, Cannon says major pharmaceutical companies have contacted her, offering to provide an official endorsement in exchange for an initial payment from her and exclusive rights to carry her naturopathic products. Under the arrangement, she says she would have to double her prices.
Like Phelps, Cannon sees alternative medicine working best in tandem with conventional medicine, but with each providing distinct services rather than integrating entirely. Both doctors would like to see medical insurance companies help patients foot the bill.
In the meantime though, people such as Albert Alberto, 67, of Henderson say they will continue to pay out-of-pocket for a regained health that no amount of traditional medicine can provide. Suffering from a variety of debilitating illnesses since 1991, diagnosed by conventional specialists as an undetermined virus with muscle and nerve degeneration, Alberto says he has found a new lease on life after less than a month of visits to Cannon's practice.
"At a Catholic church you receive Communion, and with doctors, whatever they hand you, you feel the same way at first," Alberto said. "But then you find out that 90 percent of what they hand you gives you 50,000 side effects."
While Alberto acknowledges his exaggeration, he says that just two months ago he didn't want to get up in the morning, he couldn't keep down food, he had difficulty walking and he suffered from chronic fatigue. A regimen of oils, dietary supplements and the use of an oxygenating machine, in combination with slightly smaller doses of Alberto's conventional medications appears to have worked at least a partial cure.
Back in the realm of the healthy, Alberto tells the story of his extraordinary rebound avidly and at length, says he walks more confidently with his cane and that he can keep down spaghetti now, "if you call that food."
It remains to be seen whether alternative and more traditional medical practitioners will adopt similarly positive views of their new, shared roles as partners in maintaining the health of patients. In many cases, as with Cannon and UNMC, they are already neighbors.
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