ABSTRACT
This work uses a modification of the five domains created by the National Institutes of Health’s Office of Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM). CAM practitioners from around the United States worked with government officials and other medical personnel to create these classifications during the Clinton administration. These original classifications or domains have been slightly modified here to enable them to incorporate education, licensing, and regulation needs for CAM. Specifically, some “energy” therapies have been moved to the “biologically based” classification, including magnetic therapy, since magnetic fields are both detectable and measurable, and their effects can be measured in reasonable randomized trials overseen by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The “Energy” domain has been updated to include “Metaphysical” as part of the title. This energy/metaphysical domain removes prayer from the mind/ body category as an “undetectable” (at least not detectable without much argument) means of intervention: prayer asks an outside, metaphysical force to intervene. The energy/metaphysical category now includes Reiki, shamanism, and therapeutic touch, not due to a lack of conventional scientific proof but because it will be recommended here that licensing and regulation for such modalities be classified in the same way that religious and faith-based means of intervention have always been classified, and that is to be exempt from such constraints.
