subject: People have Growing Enthusiasm on Plant Medicine [print this page] People have Growing Enthusiasm on Plant Medicine
America is a country of immigrants with all ethnic groups of immigrants from various countries. Its faith, socio-cultural background and value orientation are extremely complex with all kinds of strange things. However, the government and society always take a tolerant attitude and don't interfere with this, thus forming a unique pluralistic society. Disproportionately, the government and medical circle had been taking a wrong attitude of exclusion to plant medicine.
Western medicine is mainstream medicine. Most of the states legislate to prescribe that only western medicine can legally practice and other therapies are all illegal and they won't issue the license to practice medicine. Only in areas where ethnic minorities live concentratedly (such as California), they are lenient to give special permission. Hospitals all over the country only provide western medicine service.
Insurance companies only cover applicants who use western medicine and they don't claim for expenses of other therapies. Drugstores only dispense western medicine and don't provide plant medicine. Medical college and college of pharmacy only teach western medicine course and never involve in other therapies and plant medicine. From this point of view, the medical education of America is not only extremely advanced but also very closed and conservative.
Such policies and practices that discriminate against those who hold different views and dominate of western medicine are really difficult to envisage for this most diverse cultural country in the world. Nearly 200 years after the founding of the country in 1970, this condition began to change. After nearly 20 years of deliberation and slow quantitative, alarming changes occurred since the 1990s. According to a sample survey from Harvard Medical School and Beth Israel General Hospital of Boston, the main changes are listed below.
The number of people who use other therapies hoick. In 1990, those who use substitutive therapy accounted for 33.8% of the adult; this figure increased drastically to 42.1% in 1997, which meant that 4 in every 10 adults use other therapies. According to the survey from Stanford University Medical School in 1998, in those who are dissatisfied with western treatment, 40% choose substitutive therapy; even in those who are very satisfied, 39% have also used alternative therapy.
Herbal therapy is very popular. Number of users in 1990 was 1,500,000 and surged to 9,960,000; 10,490,000 attenders were recorded. Many patients use western medicine and other therapies simultaneously. In patients who use western medicine, 31.8% also use alternative therapy at the same time, of which 61% don't consult their doctors. Many patients choose plant medicine to treat skin diseases such as hemorrhoids, herpes, IBS, molluscum, nail fungus, varicose veins, warts and so on.
In 1997, adults in America spent 21.2 billion dollars on alternative therapy, of which 5.1 billion were spent on plant medicine. In 1997, the expenditure of the use of alternative therapies of American was 27-34 billion dollars, while the expenditure of the use of western medicine was 29.3 billion dollars, which meant that the ratio between them has become equal.
People's growing enthusiasm on alternative therapy forced 63 of the 135 medical colleges to offer alternative therapy courses one after another, including the world's top colleges such as Harvard, Yale, Johns Hopkins, Columbia, Stanford, University of California and so on. This trend also forced AMA who thought alternative therapy as fallacies in the past to call on its 300,000 members to learn more information about alternative therapies and learn their diagnosis technology.
Several insurance companies such as California Western Life Insurance Company has begun to agree on reimbursement of plant medicine expenses. Other companies are still under investigation. Thus, we can conclude that plant medicine in the United States was rather slow to be recognized and accepted not only for historical reasons but more importantly because of the trouble thinking of the long-standing prejudices and trade protectionism in medical science.
Although synthetic drugs are effective, they have much side effects with high price. Some ailments could not be treated by synthetic drugs. Many people in America don't have health insurance and taking medicine is a major economic burden for them. For some common diseases or mild diseases, it's the most economical choice to take plant medicine in accordance with the symptoms. To learn why plant medicine is safer and more effective, please go to http://www.naturespharma.org.
