Pioneers of a new medicine: meet a group of renegade doctors who are part of wave of change revolutionizing American medicine

Vegetarian Times, Feb, 1997 by Eric Patterson, Luise Light

A CRISIS OF FAITH

What were the pivotal events that led these pioneers to search for alternatives? Some say Western medicine lost its luster when they observed that the side effects of treatment could be as bad as the illness itself. That's what happened to John Charles Reed, M.D., a Phoenix, Ariz.-based family physician, a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania Medical School in Philadelphia, who was dissatisfied with what conventional medicine offered the majority of his patients. Reed met with other "straight-up" doctors who were using non-mainstream methods and was impressed with what he saw. He went for training and discovered he liked "putting his hands on patients to find out what was wrong with them." Now, he holds licenses in osteopathy, acupuncture and homeopathy in addition to internal medicine and is a skilled practitioner of cranial-facial therapy.

One of Reed's patients, a young woman who had an automobile accident several years ago and, combined with complications from dental surgery, left her face and neck so painful a mere caress would cause her to cry. The woman explained her treatment as Reed cradled her head in his hands, his fingers barely moving as they stretched along her jawline and hooked under her ears. "He may not look as if he's doing anything, but my body definitely feels it," she says. "I feel better for days afterward." Reed says he is gently manipulating the bones of the woman's skull and the sacrum at the base of her spine. He explains what he is doing is moving the bones in order to alter the fluid dynamics in her skull and spinal column, shifting the pressure on the sympathetic nerve endings in the membranes surrounding the brain.

Most physicians don't believe these bones have any movement at all, but he ignores the skeptics because he has witnessed the results. A former OAM advisor, Reed practices at the Arizona Center for Healdi and Medicine that offers both conventional and alternative therapies, including acupuncture, homeopathy, body manipulation and herbs, along with prescription drugs. "I'm not anti-drug," Reed insists, "I'm just anti-overdrugging people." As for the critics who say any recovery by other than conventional medicine is due to spontaneous remission, he quips, "I specialize in spontaneous remission." Reed remains unimpressed by conventional medicine's success in alleviating chronic pain. He says his entire practice is based on treating conventional medicine's failures. "And that's all right with me, but I have high standards. I expect my patients to get better twice as fast under my care, or I'm not doing my job."

Other doctors had their epiphanies when they saw alternative treatments could be more effective than conventional ones. Bill Gray received his medical degree from Stanford University in 1970 and a year later was working at Kaiser Permanente's (a health maintenance organization) outpatient clinic in Oakland, Calif., when a flu epidemic hit the city. Although no medications existed to treat the flu, which was viral, Gray watched as his fellow doctors, not wanting to appear powerless, prescribed antibiotics to patient after patient, even though antibiotics are not effective against viral diseases.