Poll Results - December 2001

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Poll Results for the following Question:

Do you support the idea of having just one national acupuncture/Oriental medicine organization?

Results:

Yes
47.5%
No
52.5%

Total Respondents: 1790

Comments:

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Anonymous
Yes YES. Let there be only one chief. If you don't like it, you can always vote him out next year.

rolliedc@swbell.net
No All things must have balance to be healthy. Yin - Yang, a choice is good, balance is nice.

yskang@home.com
Yes So that will be able to set a professional stantard

Anonymous
No The person below who talks of the AMA is right. Just look at our organizations today. We have already started to restrain the trade of acupuncture in this country. Asian DCMs can't practice here without going through all the liscensure requirements. We are even trying to prevent our own health care professionals like MDs, DCs, DDS, and DPMs from practicing acupuncture. This practice stifles the free flow of thought and will ultimately hurt patients who could have otherwise benefited by the free flow of knowledge between all health care professionals of the whole world. Let's not build organizations that will create more beaurocracy of professional self interest. Let's break down the barriers to the free flow of knowledge and practice so that all of humankind may benefit.

Anonymous
No If we have one organization we will fall into the good old boy system. We will have only a few cocky "elitists" controlling the rest of us. They will pass the titles of president, acuupuncturist of the year and etc. around to each other and pat each other on the back as they stab the rest of us in our backs. Just look at the AMA. The majority of medical doctors don't belong to the AMA or profess to believe in their political and feverently "religious" bias that only American western medical doctors are gods of the body. European and asian medical doctors can practice throughout the world without taking medical exams in every country and being lucky enough to land a residency except in America. This is how the AMA locks out competition. European and asian doctors should be able to practice here and bring with them their knowledge which would allow the whole health care society grow their IQ. Lets not be arrogant to think that one organization will satisfy us all because it won't!

Anonymous
No If one reads this question as it is written, it is simple ignorance to answer yes. There are different national AOM organizations for different purposes that do not overlap - AOM educational program accreditation, professional certification, an organization of colleges, and national professional membership orgs such as general AOM orgs, sports acupuncture orgs, qigong orgs, oriental bodywork therapy orgs, detox specialists, and on and on, simply cannot exist as one entity, either functionally or legally.
If the question was meant to refer only to professional membership organizations, as I suspect it was, and I will bet that is how most readers have interpretted it - I would declare the results you gather from this poll to be invalid as a result - anyone who answers yes to the question is oblivious to the professional world they operate in and know nothing of human nature. We will not have one national AOM professional organization for the same reason we do not have one national civic org. that we all donate to or volunteer for, one national art form, one national newspaper or magazine, etc, etc. As a people, we insist on freedom of choice and expression and on the checks and balances that a free enterprise system ensures. We cannot then complain of the headaches that accompany lack of uniformity. The voices of the AOM community are many and diverse - it's way past time we got used to the idea. The ones who cry the loudest for this so-called unification are the very ones who would be the first to scream if their own ideas and practices were contravened in the interests of unity.

lizzymckeown@yahoo.com.au
No Acupuncture is so diverse that in Australia, we have several Practitioners and Health Care Providers that are not affiliated with an organisations. They must be accredited to get a patient rebate from Private Health Funds and that alone is enough recommendation.

lzhang@bnl.gov
Yes The more practitioners in one organization, the voice of this organization will have more power!

Anonymous
No i think that chiropractors should give acupuncture since they introduced it to America back in the early 1971.It goes with chiropractic beautifully.

Anonymous
Yes should be one assn, but i doubt that you could get the alliance folks to embrace the idea that there should be only one practitioner of oriental medicine, and that non-LAc's should not have membership in the professional assn.