8

Putting Health Back into
Our Disease Care System

On the surface, it appears that America has the finest health care system money can buy. We have sophisticated diagnostic procedures that can identify deadly disorders such as heart disease and cancer; surgical procedures that can repair a ruptured spleen or replace a degenerated hip; immunizations that can prevent horrible diseases such as polio and smallpox; and antibiotics and other drugs that can treat infections, both minor and deadly.

And, at first glance, it appears that all we need to solve the health care crisis is either to find more money to pay the bills or find new ways to cut the costs. That way as many people as possible will have access to our current health care system-and everything will be fine.

True or not true? Not true. It turns out appearances are misleading. There is more to health care than emergency procedures, and there is more to the health crisis than a lack of money.¹ In fact, America ranks near the bottom in overall health compared to 29 other industrialized nations-and that ranking has been on a downward spiral for nearly 40 years. This is despite the fact that we spend-by a very wide margin-the highest percentage of our gross domestic product on health care.^{2 , 3}

If you listen to a growing number of insiders-medical doctors trained in some our best medical schools-then you know that the problem with our health care system is not just one of economics, but, more crucially, of content. And the public as well seems to know something is wrong because an estimated 30% of the population have visited a health care professional other than a medical doctor for their health complaints, according to a study published in 1993 in the New England Journal of Medicine.⁴ And those statistics are from back in 1990.

The consensus seems to be this: Whatever's good about our modern health care system needs to be much better. Increasingly, health care professionals are recognizing the need to change the focus, reverse the current trend from a disease care system, and emphasize, instead, prevention of disease and keeping people healthy through natural, non-toxic medicine. It's a common sense approach that is supported by compelling scientific evidence, and it also makes sense for reasons both economic and humane. But like the issue of genetic engineering, this debate has not made it anywhere near the top of the agendas of the two main political parties, so there's not much serious discussion about it in the political arena.

Fortunately, many physicians are working to make it an issue of national concern. Two are profiled here. Through their research and experience you can see more clearly what is wrong and what needs to be done.

Barry Charles, M.D., is executive director of the Physicians' Association for Eradicating Chronic Disease, an organization of hundreds of doctors who are concerned about both the alarming rise in the number of people who suffer from chronic diseases and the inability of modern medicine to treat these diseases effectively. These doctors are establishing medical centers to treat chronic disorders using a comprehensive approach to health care that includes natural medicine.

Dr. Charles is a graduate of the New York University School of Medicine. He has spent the last 20 years working to educate government agencies and members of Congress, doctors, health insurance leaders, medical schools and the public about the deficiencies of modern medicine and the need for a prevention-oriented approach to health care. He has organized national and international medical conferences, and has supervised the training of medical doctors worldwide in new modalities that would keep people healthy and be more effective in treating those with chronic diseases.

Barry Charles knew he wanted to be a doctor when he was a child. He comes from a medical family in New Jersey-his father is a pediatrician and his brother is a radiologist; other relatives are doctors or work as health professionals. For Dr. Charles, the failings of modern medicine are a bitter pill to swallow. But what is far more galling, he says, is that millions of people suffer unnecessarily from these failings, and that this suffering is not being addressed by the medical establishment or the government.


June 14, 1997, Washington, D.C.   Dr. Charles testifying before the Department of Education's Office of Post Secondary Education. The purpose of the meeting, basically, is to get rubber stamp approval for the licensing agency that accredits medical colleges-the Liaison Committee for Medical Education (LCME). Barry Charles is there to object. He is given five minutes to speak and tells the Department why. He makes four bold points:

1. Our current health care system causes very serious health hazards, and this is substantiated by thousands of studies published in leading medical journals, such as the Journal of the American Medical Association and the New England Journal of Medicine.

2. Nevertheless, the Liaison Committee for Medical Education continues to accredit the same medical curricula which propagate this flawed system.

3. Medical schools need to develop new curricula that will educate medical students properly in prevention, and include the most up-to-date knowledge of how to treat disease at its source.

4. The LCME is made up solely of officials of the AMA and the association that represents the medical colleges themselves, both of which have vested interests to maintain the status quo.

For these reasons, Dr. Charles says that the LCME should be replaced by a new, independent committee open to approaches that can safely and effectively prevent disease and promote health.

I had talked earlier with Barry Charles about his testimony, so he calls me afterwards to give a report. He says that several committee members asked good questions and acknowledged that chronic disease is a major problem in America. But they were unwilling to give the status quo a budge, not even just a little. The Department voted unanimously to renew the committee's accreditation authority.

Dr. Charles isn't surprised. He's been through this for 25 years. He knows, however, that in spite of whatever happened-or did not happen-in Washington on that June day, change is in the air. In the past few years there has been an enormous shift in the nation-among both doctors and patients-towards natural, preventive medicine. He believes that it's just a matter of time before policy makers recognize the inadequacies and hazards of modern medicine and adopt a humane, cost-effective, safe, common sense approach to health care.

It's now July 20, a month later, and I am in Bonn, Germany, listening to Dr. Charles speak at an international conference of leaders of Natural Law Parties. There are 1,000 people here-business leaders, physicians, scientists, educators, lawyers-representing 60 countries. He seems to be elaborating on the testimony he gave before the Department of Education, and it seems to be striking a chord with people from all these countries. (It turns out that what everyone knows is true: the world is shrinking. The problems are much the same in every country-environmental pollution, health care costs, crime, drug abuse, etc.-and the solutions are much the same as well.)

As I listen to him speak, I have to admit that when I first heard him talk about the serious dangers of modern medicine, without hearing all the facts, the whole notion sounded a bit extreme. But when you consider the facts all at once, in one sitting, as Barry Charles is giving it out tonight, the case is overwhelming.

Barry Charles clicks on a slide that fills a massive screen behind him. The profile of a man appears standing next to a huge stack of papers. "This is actually a stack of several thousand medical articles on the hazards of medical treatments," he says pointing an arrow at the screen. "They have been collected from the most prestigious medical journals in the world. And this stack of articles-this high heap of hazards-is growing higher every day."

He holds up one journal that reports on the epidemic of chronic disease in America.

"One hundred million Americans suffer from a chronic disorder-and the numbers are predicted only to get worse," he says, citing a study in the Journal of the American Medical Association in November 1996.⁵

I look around the hall. Translators with headsets are busy converting his words. But still not that many people really react, probably, I think, because not many people are certain exactly what a chronic disease is.

"A chronic disease is a disease for which modern medicine says there is no cure, including heart disease, asthma, arthritis, menstrual disorders, migraines, diabetes, multiple sclerosis, ulcerative colitis, thyroid disease, Alzheimers, and Parkinsons," Dr. Charles says. "These are terrible diseases that linger on for years, many of them cause recurrent pain, and all that modern medicine can offer people with these diseases are palliative treatments-treatments which suppress the symptoms or slow the progress of the disease, often with very dangerous, even fatal, side-effects."

Dr. Charles says that the problem is that modern medicine doesn't fully understand the cause of such diseases and, as a result, can't offer any cures. Another problem is that most diseases are in some way caused by behavioral factors, such as diet, stress, health habits, and environmental influences, and our current health care system can't do anything about that either.

"Modern medicine treats diseases on a superficial level, not at their source," he says. "Nevertheless, chronic disorders in the U.S. account for $435 billion in costs-including about 80% of all hospital stays and 69% of all hospital admissions.⁵

"What does that show?" he asks rhetorically.

I say to myself that it shows that not many people think there are treatment choices to what modern medicine offers.

Dr. Charles says something equally true. "It shows that our health care system is sick."

I look around again and now people are reacting, taking notes, a few are raising their hands with questions. It does sound appalling, when you think about it, that 40% of Americans suffer from a serious disease with no known cure.

He lists more statistics:

• More than 180,000 people die in the U.S. each year partly as a result of medical treatment-a number "equivalent to three jumbo jet crashes every two days throughout the year," he says, quoting from an article in 1995 the Journal of the American Medical Association that originated at the Harvard School of Public Health.5 (How would the public react and how quickly would the FAA respond if that happened three times a week? I wonder.) Another JAMA article points out that this number is far more than the annual automobile mortality rate of 45,000, and accounts for more deaths than all other accidents combined. In fact, more people are dying today from problems associated with medical treatment than die from AIDS.
  
  
• More than 80,000 people die each year from infections they pick up in the hospital.⁶
  
  
• Over three million people are harmed each year due to medical mistakes (e.g., a patient is given the wrong dose of medication⁷ or has the wrong appendage amputated⁸). In response, the AMA has just founded the National Patients' Safety Foundation to deal with just this problem. By the AMA's own research, over 40% of Americans will be impacted by medical errors, some of which last a lifetime.⁹
  
  
• The overuse of antibiotics is creating germs that are drug resistant to antibiotics, leaving health authorities with the very real threat of an epidemic of diseases for which there may be no treatment. Doctors are now alarmed by the appearance of a common bacterium that is resistant to even the most powerful antibiotic-they worry that this is a harbinger of a future medical disaster.^10,11
  
  
• Commonly prescribed drugs can cause a wide range of side effects such as skin rashes, nausea, headaches, and gastrointestinal disorders as well as abnormal heart rhythms, angina, immune system dysfunction, serious blood disorders, liver or kidney toxicity, depression, and deafness.¹²

"Put all the statistics down on one piece of paper and they're staggering," Dr. Charles says. "A significant number of people are being harmed by medical treatments. It's a horrible epidemic in its own right, and it shows clearly how urgently we need to change our health care system."

A man standing at the audience microphone asks if there isn't something good to be said about modern medicine.

Dr. Charles nods and agrees. He says that yes, obviously, there are parts of modern medicine that have been very successful, even miraculous, especially in acute care and trauma. "But when we take a close look at all the research we have to conclude that there are serious limitations to this approach that should not be ignored. We have to recognize these inadequacies and work to remedy them-especially when people are being harmed," he says.

What can be done? another man asks.

"It's clear that there are elements missing from modern medicine," Dr. Charles says. "There are decades of research on safe and effective therapies based on profound new discoveries of how the body functions from its most fundamental level, which allow us to treat and prevent disease at its source. These include diet, exercise, herbs, daily and seasonal routines, environmental influences, the effect of consciousness on health, and collective health measures. These should be available in our health care system."

Prevention. I think back to my childhood and the friends I grew up with. For us, prevention was-and probably still is today-going to bed early, eating a balanced diet, wearing warm clothes in the winter so we didn't catch a cold, doing limbering up exercises before basketball practice so we didn't pull a muscle, shots for mumps and measles and, in my case, regular tetanus shots because of my frequent encounters with rusty nails.

But now it's also clear that while there are shots to prevent those childhood diseases, there are no shots to prevent adult diseases, such as hardening of the arteries, many types of cancer, Alzheimers, rheumatoid arthritis, and Parkinson's disease. Modern medicine has few answers there, but the need is clear.

Consider heart disease. This is the leading killer in the Western world. Medical specialists now recognize that heart disease can be prevented, yet it continues to be an epidemic. For example, Dr. Alexander Leaf, former chair of the department of preventive medicine at Harvard Medical School, described the current approach to coronary heart disease as "inadequate, despite massive efforts to apply costly treatments after the disease is clinically manifest. ... Doctors are too preoccupied with measures that only lessen symptoms and which will do nothing for the next generation of 30-, 40-, or 50-year-olds, dooming them to the same heart disease."

And consider cancer. According to a recent Harvard study, at least 60% of all cancers are preventable.¹³ And the 30-year, $26-billion war against cancer in America is being lost, according to an article in the New England Journal of Medicine.¹⁴ The author of the article, Dr. John Bailar, an internationally respected researcher, concludes that the key to controlling cancer is prevention.

What do doctors mean when they talk of prevention?

Barry Charles says that when we speak of prevention in modern medicine, "we talk of how women over 40 should get a mammogram or men over 40 should have a prostate examination. But this is not true prevention, this is really just early detection. In truth, there are three levels of prevention:

• Primary Prevention - "This means we do something that actually prevents the onset of the disease-that keeps the body in balance so that even very small imbalances don't crop up that lead to a disease," he says.
  
  
• Secondary Prevention - "The second level means, basically, detecting a disease at its earliest stage, before it causes any significant health problems, and then doing whatever we can to prevent that disease from progressing. For example, conducting tests and finding that an individual has atherosclerosis and then putting that person on a diet and exercise program so that he doesn't have a heart attack."
  
  
• Tertiary Prevention - At the third level, the person already has significant health problems, and we do something to prevent the problems from getting worse. For example, a man already has had a heart attack, and now we want to prevent him from having a second one. Or he has diabetes and we want to keep him from going blind and losing his leg."

The crime in all of this, Barry Charles says, is that even though so much of disease and death is preventable, including 60% of cancer, there is little or no emphasis on prevention in our health care system. In fact, America spends only one percent of its trillion-dollar health budget on prevention.

What about health maintenance organizations-HMOs, a woman asks. Don't they offer prevention?

"That was their intention, but in reality they don't offer anything new or different," Dr. Charles says. "HMOs were created to make the delivery of health care more efficient and thereby reduce costs. It was a good idea, and expenditures dropped at first, but now costs are going up again. In 1998, the increase for most plans is projected to be five to seven percent, with other, smaller plans as much as 30 percent. That's because HMOs put the cart before the horse. They try to reduce costs by limiting treatments and diagnostic procedures, and by reducing reimbursements to doctors-but that'll never work. The only way to reduce costs is to make people healthier. Then you can actually reduce health care utilization. And the only way you can do that is through effective approaches to prevent and treat disease at its basis."

Even from the standpoint of the delivery of conventional medicine, there are serious flaws with HMOs, he says.

"What kind of health maintenance or insurance would pay only when a person gets sick, and not provide services to keep someone healthy right from the beginning of their enrollment?

"Health care authorities have to wake up and realize that modern medicine has serious limitations-and that a new knowledge is urgently needed. We have to do more than pay lip service to prevention, and we have to look seriously at other therapies that work and are safe, even if they come from outside the usual knowledge base of allopathic medicine."

Barry Charles says that if we seriously want to reform health care in America, we can't simply reform its financing and delivery. We must reform the treatment that gets delivered and paid for. For that, laws that grant a monopoly to the current system and that govern medical practice have to be changed.

"For people to be denied access to treatments of their choice that are effective, especially when the current system is inadequate, is a clear violation of human rights," Dr. Charles says.

"'Health freedom' legislation and 'access to medical care' legislation have to be enacted," he says. "Congress and state governments have to mandate support for prevention. They have to change the emphasis of the system. The health care system has to be opened up to all therapies that are effective, even if they are not a part of modern allopathic medicine-and this includes natural medicine. And medical educators have to give doctors training in this."

Dr. Charles says don't look to the American Medical Association to push for these changes.

"The AMA is a political organization dedicated to maintaining the status quo. The political action committee of the AMA consistently ranks among the top ten spenders on Capitol Hill, and they spend to keep the current system in place.

"To expect the AMA to take a leadership role and change the system-to all of a sudden produce a prevention-oriented system with safe and effective therapies-would be a waste of time. Even many doctors are no longer looking to the AMA for leadership. In fact, the AMA is losing members. In 1996, only 40% of doctors belonged to the AMA-down from 90% in the 1960s. If doctors aren't looking to the AMA for leadership, the public shouldn't look to the AMA for change."

Then where should we look for true health care reform?

"We have to demand it ourselves," Dr, Charles says. "We have to demand it from the government, from doctors, from health insurers and HMOs, and from medical educators. But we also have to take responsibility for our own health rather than wait until we fall sick and then see a doctor. Much of sickness is caused by violations of natural law-unhealthy diet, poor sleep habits, etc. We can't play a passive role. The shift to prevention and natural medicine is being driven by the public. We must vigorously continue to push our disease care system into becoming a true health care system."

Barry Charles says that today thousands of doctors, on their own, are investigating therapies and modalities that can provide a safer, more complete and effective system of health care. In 1997, many of his colleagues opened medical centers for treating chronic diseases through natural medicine. Many more such centers are slated to open in the future. In Barry Charles' opinion, these facilities cannot be opened quickly enough.

"When modern medicine declares a disease to be chronic, it damages the patient psychologically to think that there's no possibility of a fully effective treatment. For someone who is sick, every day is a terrible burden. And as doctors we can't go on saying, 'Oh, gosh, this patient has a chronic disease that we can't treat, so we'll just give him some more pain medication.' And we can't be satisfied with therapies that have serious side-effects, even if there are benefits in the short-term. The knowledge now exists to bring health to every American. If there's something available that works, then we should make it available-widely available."

Enlivening the Body's Inner Intelligence
to Prevent Disease and Promote Good Health

January 16, 1998   Dr. Stuart Rothenberg is taking my pulse. He's resting the first three fingers of his right hand on the radial pulse of my right wrist. After 30 seconds he applies just a bit more pressure. He's not counting heart beats. Instead, he's "looking for patterns of imbalance" in my body. This is hardly a high-tech procedure. It's thousands of years old. But more and more medical doctors are learning this ancient science of pulse diagnosis as an accurate, non-invasive way of detecting disease in its earliest stages. I am healthy, Dr. Rothenberg says. To stay that way, he will prescribe an herbal compound that researchers at The Ohio State University Medical School have found to be a potent antioxidant; he will make modifications in my diet that include steering clear of hot, spicy foods; and he will make a pointed admonition to get more rest.

Dr. Rothenberg is the medical director of the Center for Chronic Disorders in Dallas, one of the nation's first medical facilities to integrate natural approaches in the treatment and prevention of health disorders. I'm here at Barry Charles's suggestion. If I had been here for a regular doctor's appointment, he would also have put me through a standard medical check-up. But I'm not. I'm here for just a few minutes to find out more about the shift towards natural medicine and the programs offered at the Center.

Dr. Rothenberg, 49, is a busy man. He oversees an in-residence program for people suffering from chronic diseases, and he administers an out-patient rejuvenation program for people who want to stay healthy. In recent months he has also become a focal point for doctors in the Dallas area who are interested in learning more about natural medicine and possibly collaborating on research. In addition, he and a group of other doctors have been encouraged by the National Institutes of Health Office of Alternative Medicine to apply for a grant that would designate his facility as a Center for Research in Cardiovascular Disease and Alternative Medicine. That application process alone can be a full-time job.

Dr. Rothenberg graduated from the New York University School of Medicine in 1974 and promptly went into family practice. He has been board-certified in family practice by the American Board of Family Practice since 1978, and he has been a Fellow of the American Academy of Family Physicians since 1983. He has also served as a member of the clinical faculty in family medicine at the University of California at San Diego School of Medicine.

Dr. Rothenberg has incorporated natural medicine into his family practice since 1983, and is now one of the most experienced medical doctors in natural medicine in the world. He has lectured internationally on natural medicine at the National Institutes of Health in Washington, D.C.; the Institute of Preventive Medicine of the Soviet Union in Moscow (in 1990); the Hadassah-Hebrew University School of Medicine in Jerusalem; and the First International Conference on Ayur-Veda, sponsored by the All-India Ayur-Veda Congress in New Delhi.

It's a crystal-clear day. Through the window in his office I can see the sprawling Dallas skyline stretch out for miles. I ask Dr. Rothenberg if attitudes towards natural medicine are changing in Dallas, which has traditionally been a more conservative bastion of the country.

"At lightning speed," he says. "Five years ago you couldn't say you were practicing complementary medicine and be taken seriously by the medical community. Now it's become an issue of intense, positive interest."

Why the sudden interest?

"It's driven by the health care consumer. The public is demanding alternatives to conventional care. Modern medicine has not been successful in addressing the root cause of most of the serious disorders that afflict people, so the public is driving the change."

I ask Dr. Rothenberg what prompted him to make the shift from modern medicine-allopathy-to natural medicine.

"My patients," he says. "So many of them had health problems that I wasn't able to help with modern medicine. Often all I could do was to prescribe a drug that would suppress, or temporarily alleviate, a symptom, but it wouldn't get to the root cause of the disease. And often the medicines that I prescribed created side effects."

I ask for an example.

Dr. Rothenberg offers a common, but often deadly, example: high blood pressure, a disorder which afflicts close to 50 million Americans, and is a leading risk factor for heart disease, the number-one cause of death in the country.

"When I prescribed blood pressure medication to a patient I would have to prescribe it for life," he says. "Because if the medicine would be withdrawn, the blood pressure would come back up. The medication wasn't getting to the source of the problem, it was just suppressing the symptoms.

"Another problem was the side-effects, which ranged from fatigue to depression to gastrointestinal upsets to life-threatening arrhythmias. More than half of the people who are prescribed blood pressure medicine stop taking it. I didn't find out until later that a large percentage of my patients also just stopped taking the medication because of unpleasant side effects."

I ask Dr. Rothenberg, If I were a patient with an ulcer or headaches and went to see him before he began to use natural medicine, and if I went to see him today, how would he approach my disease differently?

"There is no comparison," he says. "Previously, I wouldn't have the knowledge or framework to get to the source of your problem. If you complained of a chronic headache, I would prescribe a pain reliever to temporarily suppress the pain. Or, if you had a chronic digestive system problem, I might prescribe an antacid, such as Zantac or Tagamet, to suppress the secretion of stomach acid. I would just be treating at the symptom level.

"But today I would treat your headaches or ulcer with approaches that have been time-tested for thousands of years to enliven your body's own inner capacity to create health from within."

How, I ask, does that work?

"The body has its own inner intelligence, which governs its normal physiological processes at every moment. That means it has its own inner self-repair, self-healing, balancing mechanisms. In modern medicine, we call them 'homeostatic and self-repair mechanisms.'"

For example?

"Look at the immune system. If a streptococcus germ enters the body, the immune system has a remarkable ability to identify it as a foreign invader. This 'sighting' triggers a myriad of responses. Immune system cells communicate instantaneously with each other throughout the body through chemical transmission molecules and mobilize an army of killer immune cells to destroy the invaders.

"This is the essence of the healing response," he says. "Unfortunately, there's little emphasis in modern medicine on the body's own capacity for healing. And that is why there are so many diseases we can't cure and why health care has become so costly. But the main goal of natural medicine is to enhance, promote, and enliven these natural, self-repair mechanisms by awakening the body's inner intelligence."

Dr. Rothenberg says that many of the natural treatment programs offered at the Center are based on work done by MIT-trained neuroscientist Tony Nader, M.D., Ph.D., whose analysis of human physiology, he says, "linked the structures and functions of the body to an inner intelligence that underlies and administers all these functions."

He pulls out a chart that shows 40 different approaches of treatment that are grouped in four categories: mind, body, behavior, and environment, and discusses the underpinnings of natural medicine.¹⁵

• Mind - "The mind is very powerful in creating health or causing disease," he says. "If the mind is balanced and calm, then it becomes a powerful promoter of healing responses. This is not just a subjective experience, it is scientific fact. Every thought, every feeling that we have produces powerful chemicals in the nervous system, called neurochemicals, including neuropeptides, which promote either health or disease. We teach people how to tap within to the quietest, most refined level of the mind, and to liberate our inner reserves of healing, orderliness, and integration for the body."
  
  
• Body - "Diet has a considerable impact on health-much greater than we imagine in conventional medicine. Our approach to diet is individualized, it's tailored to the needs of the specific patient. To help us to determine the proper diet, we use pulse diagnosis to determine the patterns of imbalance in the body that are the root cause of disorder. We can either do this as a preventive tool before a person falls sick, so we can provide him or her with measures that would be helpful to prevent the disease from emerging. Or, if a person is already ill, we can diagnose the pattern of imbalances which is at the root of the illness and then prescribe diet and other measures to help to reverse those imbalances.
  
  "We also draw upon the knowledge of thousands of herbal preparations that are used traditionally to enhance the body's own healing responses.¹⁶ In addition, we recognize that many chronic disorders have their root in impurities that have accumulated in the tissues of the body and suppress the body's natural immunity and other repair mechanisms. So we use physiological purification procedures to rid the body of toxins that come from the food we eat, and also from environmental pollution. And we offer an exercise program that includes exercises that integrate mind and body."
  
  
• Behavior - "The body has an internal clock that is aligned with the cycles of nature, such as the 24-hour cycle of day and night, the monthly cycle of the moon's rotation around the earth, and the annual cycle of major seasons. There are daily and seasonal routines that can promote balance and synchrony with the rhythms and cycles of nature-key factors in preventing disease and maintaining good health."
  
  
• Environment - "Modern medicine overlooks the critical influence that the environment has on health. We use knowledge of how to construct the home and workplace using only nontoxic materials," he says, citing a recent article in the New England Journal of Medicine entitled "Building-Related Illnesses," on the growing evidence that toxic building materials can cause the so-called "sick-building syndrome."¹⁷ "But more than nontoxic materials, we use traditional knowledge of how the proper layout and orientation of the building on the site can promote health. This means, for example, for the maximum well-being of the occupant, a building should be constructed along a north-south/east-west grid, with the most ideal entrance coming from the east or north. And for the distant environment, we recognize that we're not in isolation from the universe. In fact, as we know from modern science and learn from the traditional systems of natural medicine, we're very much influenced by the cycles of the distant environment, including those of the sun, moon, planets, and stars-what have been called our 'cosmic counterparts'-and we provide approaches to promote harmony between the individual and the distant environment."

Dr. Rothenberg has to take a phone call in the next room. I wonder, when he was in medical school, what exactly did he learn about health? When Dr. Rothenberg returns, I ask him.

"Actually, we learned a lot about disease, but very little about health ," he says. "You have to understand, modern medicine is part of a reductionist system of western science. That means that scientists try to break things down to find out their component parts. For example, we can break the physiology down to the cellular and the sub-cellular levels, and this has yielded enormous progress in our understanding about disease. The problem is that health is a holistic phenomenon; it is more than the sum of all these different component parts. It transcends the parts. So, if your approach is reductionistic, then you lose the ability to create health. What you gain is the ability to create temporary, isolated effects in certain parts of the body, but you do that at the risk of creating problems in other parts. Modern medicine is basically a fragmented approach that ignores the whole in favor of looking at the parts.

"Of course, we do have to keep in mind that there have been enormous advances in modern medicine in specific areas: surgical procedures, replacement therapy in cases of hormonal deficiencies, and the use of antibiotics to eradicate infectious disease. On the other hand, I'd have to admit that the widespread use of antibiotics is also fraught with problems. Today this approach is creating antibiotic-resistant organisms-germs-which are potentially a very great health problem. These organisms are resistant to the very drugs that we use to treat them.

"The basic problem is that our system today is disease-oriented rather than health-oriented. Doctors are always looking at individual diseases in isolation, but not at the solution to those diseases, which is holistic, which is to create health, wholeness. It's as if we're in a dark room, and we're spending all our time trying to diagnose darkness-how many kinds of darkness there are, how did it get here, and how do we get rid of it. In the midst of this focus, we'll miss the fact that all we have to do to get rid of darkness is to turn on the light. In fact, darkness is nothing other than the absence of light. All the different diseases that we find so fascinating in conventional medicine are really all just an absence of one element, which is health. In a natural approach we focus our resources on enlivening health. It's a holistic approach that gets to the root of the problem of all diseases."

Dr. Rothenberg says that interest in natural medicine is sure to grow as doctors all over the country continue to incorporate it in their practices and publish their research findings-and that will drive a change in public policy.

"Already, there's considerable interest in the mainstream medical community in natural medicine, something that wasn't there even a few years ago," he says, pointing to the announcement by the Journal of the American Medical Association that it will devote an entire issue to research on natural medicine in late 1998.¹⁸

"This new approach must be translated into public policy to solve the health care crisis in America," says Dr. Rothenberg. "It can be easily done if there are no obstacles put in the way. It will be much more cost-effective than trying to fight these innumerable diseases one-by-one-and it will be much more humane."

Dr. Rothenberg walks with me out the door. I've got time before I have to catch a flight to the West coast, so I skip the freeway and take the route through the city. In a few minutes-no surprise-I'm caught in traffic on Harry Hines Blvd. Looming large to my left is the University of Texas-Southwestern Medical School and Hospital Center. Inside, I envision that peoples' lives are being saved-"ER"-style-diseases are being treated, crises are being averted, and new ones are being created. It's a huge complex, an institution of fortress-like proportions. A sweeping change in the way we treat our sick and keep people healthy, at least on the scale of what Barry Charles and Stuart Rothenberg envision, would not come easily if the American people didn't want it. It is the people who are driving the reform. They are pushing the medical doctors, the men and women who took an oath when they became physicians to "heal-or at least do no harm," to take that oath to heart. So now more and more medical doctors in this hospital and all over the country are working with other qualified health care professionals to identify new and better ways to care for our health.

How will that hospital look in five years? In ten years? It's exciting to think about because we can play a pivotal role. We can help those doctors make that decision and shape our future through the health care choices we make, and through the people we elect to office.