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

Sometimes, Oz invites an energy worker to be present at the operation to direct healing energy to die unconscious patient by touching him or her along various meridians, a network of energy pathways mapped out by ancient Chinese healers. Although Oz is skeptical that energy work will be shown to be effective, he can't ignore that patients like having the energy worker present.

Perhaps that's a valuable lesson for modem medicine in itself As James Gordon likes to tell Ids medical students, "Doctors are not mechanics, responsible simply for repairing broken parts. We are there to be present for and serve people."

Kathy Doner, M.D., a Sebastian, Florida internist who leads a regional alliance of over one hundred holistic health professionals, believes alternative medicine's holistic philosophy is changing the face of medicine. "A shift in consciousness is definitely taking place in American medicine," she says. The old mechanistic model of disease is coming down like the Berlin wall and we're starting to see that health is not just the absence of disease but an interconnected web of social, emotional, psychic, spiritual and physical dimensions. It's hard to know where this transformation is leading us or even how to pull all the pieces together, but I figure that uncertainty is a small price to pay for helping to pave the way into the future."