Word: kaptchuk
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Finished with his call, he sits down on a worn burgundy sofa. “I’m not sure what I do. I do research. I watch people,” Kaptchuk muses. “The world I was trained in is pre-scientific. I try to use my training to function in both worlds.” A Columbia graduate, Kaptchuk became interested in alternative and Chinese traditional medicine in the sixties. “I didn’t want to do anything that could be considered collaboration,” he says, explaining...
Though Kaptchuk’s medical training is unique within his branch of HMS, he says he is comfortable not having an MD, and it’s not hard to see why. Kaptchuk is the bearer of two wordy titles: Assistant Professor at Harvard Medical School’s Division for Research and Education in Complementary and Integrative Medicine and Director of Complementary Specialties at the one-month-old Harvard Osher Institute. He also serves on the National Institute of Health’s National Advisory Council for Complementary and Alternative Medicine. Between his outfit, office and job, Kaptchuk...
...feel I’m a spokesperson for all nontraditional forms of medicine,” Kaptchuk says. “Medicine has been impoverished because they have not been included...
...more and more funding is devoted to research in alternative medicine, marking a trend in the American public’s increased acceptance and adoption of these therapies. “Taking care of yourself in a spiritual way has become important to Americans,” Kaptchuk says. Studies published by researchers in Kaptchuk’s division have shown that in 1997 Americans spent an estimated $27 billion out-of-pocket on complementary care. By that same year, visits to non-traditional practitioners had increased nearly 50 percent from 1990, outnumbering visits to primary care medical doctors...
Professional acceptance of and interest in integrative and alternative medicine is a relatively new development; the HMS Division for Complementary and Integrative Medicine for which Kaptchuk works is not even two years old. But while skepticism as to the efficacy of complementary medicine remains, the field has made giant steps toward respectability—for many years such therapies were considered outright quackery...