CAMLAW : Complementary And Alternative Medicine Law Blog

Kurzweil and Obama spoke together about the contribution of their religious upbringing to their distinctive social visions.

The evolutionary anthropologist's response to atheism: we are hard-wired to believe in God, for our own good and that of the species.

We humans are not the only ones to beat our ploughshares into swords.

Twilight Brigade founder Dannion Brinkley will speak on compassion in dying.

Spiritual care at the end of life receives emphasis in a new report by a clinical oncologist.

Strong religious beliefs can protect strokestroke patients from emotional distress, perhaps aiding recovery, according to a new study.

The Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research laboratory, or PEAR, will close, not because of controversy but because, its founder says, it is time.

That would be my mantra in any election and is the theme of a forthcoming manuscript.

Spirituality is missing in psychotherapy, according to Whole Life Times in The Soulful Shrinks: Exploring the Spiritual in Psychotherapy.

Mary's Message to the World, published in the 1990's, predicted massive global failures, which could be averted by prayer.

The Association for Comprehensive Energy Psychology announced a pilot program for energy psychology certification.

In Digitial Life After Death, Scientific American.com writes of the possibility of surviving death by downloading ourselves into a sophisticated computer program.

Skeptics scoff at the 'weakest link' in the integrative medicine chain, the notion of 'human energy fields' that have not, to date, found satisfactory scientific evidence of efficacy or mechanism.

And her ability to do so raised new questions about consciousness for doctors believing that a coma equated with lack of consciousness.

Researchers have confirmed that the majority of the Universe (some 70%)- is composed of dark energy, which exerts negative pressure.

Want to make a social or business appearance while cruising on your yacht?

I've written a lot in Future Medicine about spiritual healing and the need for psychological boundaries.

10 years after graduating from the Barbara Brennan School of Healing, I finally reclaimed my healership with a "7th-level seal" on Ooj.

The "most scientifically rigorous investigation of whether prayer can heal illness," involving more than 1,800 patients, suggests that prayer either did not work, or worse, created complications.

Recent Commentary in Science and Theology argues that studies of prayer as an "alternative health" modality are misguided.

Economists say "assuming a world with no death or taxes." But in the dream state even more idiosyncratic assumptions are possible.

Once in a great while I'm told to write down a dream and inclined to share it.

Here's a dream that opened a book on energy medicine:

Now that the "peak oil" situation has been put in my awareness I keep seeing it pop up in the news.

This short vignette offers an unexpected teaching from my grandmother.

The Spirit speaks to us sometimes in dreams about our path.

Approximately 50% of Americans use some form of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM), of which “energy healing” is among the top ten most frequently used, according to a recent report.

Researchers at Mahariashi University in Iowa are hoping to prove that meditation improves academic performance.

A North Dakota paper reported on increasing use of meditation under the curious title, "Public pressure forces health-care industry to accept alternative medicine practices."

For years we've been warned of developments that may strip us of our very humanness, including the implantation of tiny chips in the 'third eye' region that track, monitor, diagnose, regulate, and control our physiology (or maybe even that of others).

A coalition of hypnotherapists declared this January 4 to be official World Hypnotism Day, with the aim of encouraging the public to learn more about the benefits of hypnosis and hypnotherapy.

A study released in the England Journal of Medicine today noted that although patients often disagree with medical recommendations for religious reasons, most physicians intuitively navigate the tension between patient preferences and medical judgment.

Presidential elections represent "duality:" the either/or; one vote for, attaching positive projections onto the favored candidate and splitting negative projections off onto the disfavored. A mass pscychology takes hold: one becomes identified with, absorbed into, a larger energy field--this group or "party" or that one.

What legal and ethical issues apply to spirituality in medical care generally as well as mental healthcare? Consider, for example, practices such as energy healing (Reiki, Therapeutic Touch, Polarity).

The same legal and ethical issues apply as they do to CAM generally, only they loom larger. For example, the following questions may arise concerning potential liability.

How does the law regulate spiritual and energy healing? Does it regard these practices as "health care" and "medicine" or "religion?" How does the law handle the kinds of potential abuse of power in the relationship between spiritual healer and client? What remedies are available, and what about legal rules governing fraud? How does this compare to the way the law handles misconduct in relationships between provider and patient generally?

Paradoxical as it may seem, is the rapid unfolding of technological "wizardry" a route to spirituality?

Yes and no. Technology is double-edged: it separates and alienates us from our own being while at the same time having the potential to connect us to our deeper potential. Take cell-phones, for example; they connect us to loved ones, important particularly during emergencies and health care crises, yet they also take us out-of-body: witness people on the street, energetically and visually hooked to their gadgetry, or gazing around with vacant eyes because they are literally "not there," not present.

I was reading in Arthur C. Clarke’s book 3001: The Final Odyssey about the advent of informational implants in people’s palms so that when they great each other (by shaking hands or raising the palm) there will be an exchange of digital (pardon the pun) information.

Complementary and alternative medical (CAM) therapies include chiropractic, acupuncture and traditional Oriental medicine, massage therapy, and herbal remedies; mind–body therapies (such as meditative practices and visualization); and folk practices and religious healing. Of these, modalities based on spiritual healing create a number of conundrums for the clinician, including legal, regulatory, and ethical issues. Further, the historic relationship between the study of epilepsy and religious experience suggests particular, potential associations between CAM therapies (and especially spiritual healing) and care for epileptic patients. There are at least two dimensions to this exploration: first, the widespread use of spiritual healing for treatment of epilepsy; and second, the hypothesized connection between epileptic seizures and mystical states. A number of legal rules help address potential abuse of authority by health care professionals, and include: (1) medical licensure; (2) scope of practice; (3) professional discipline; (4) malpractice; and (5) fraud. The longer article offers a preliminary resource for clinicians interested in these topics. Cohen MH, Regulation, religious experience, and epilepsy: a lens on complementary therapies. Epilepsy Behav 2003;4:6:602-606.