here, I cite from part of the AANP sponsored American Health Journal series "Discoveries in Alternative Medicine: Naturopathic Physicians" up at the AANP's site, Show 06, Chapter 05 [see 001., below]; and then from a quite deceptive / erroneous 1997 AANP document [see 002. below]:
001. the AANP states in "Naturopathic Physicians - Show #6, Chapter 5: Transforming Healthcare" [vsc 2010-10-09]:
"[narrator] we took our cameras to Washington, D.C. to talk with Karen Howard [(who is not an ND, by the way)...] the executive director of the American Association of Naturopathic Physicians [...Howard] 'our vision, at the AANP, is to transform today's healthcare [...] if we're going to reform our healthcare system [...we must] transform how we view a person [...] your head isn't separate from your body, and your spirit isn't separate from your body either. It really is a complete and holistic way of looking at healthcare [...] with this transformation of healthcare, with what we work at at the state and federal level, we're educating policy makers [...] we urge you to go to our web site, at www.naturopathic.org [...] what naturopathic doctors do is enable a patient'."
Note: fascinating, the claim that the body and spirit [whatever that is] aren't separate. But, in terms of modern thought, they are quite different in 'being' [ontology] and I think once we start to describe and locate the supernatural and such, we're BELIEVING.
AANP's transformation essentially involves a belief system that blends / conflates ontological types: the not supernatural and the supernatural.
Regarding AANP's educating and enabling, now, when you go to their naturopathic.org site, you find that they claim that naturopathy is science: "founded on medical tradition and scientific evidence."
Yet, the highest scientific authority in the land points out that supernatural stuff is science-exterior:
"[e.g.] the risk, if intelligent design is incorporated into school curricula, is to undermine scientific credibility and the ability of young people to distinguish science from non-science [...] in Kansas, advocates of 'intelligent design' are attempting to redefine what is and is not science, in direct conflict with the science standards recommended by both the National Academy of Sciences and AAAS [...] to reject a definition that limits science to natural explanations [...] so that science will include supernatural explanations."
Naturopathy / the holistic is nonsense at its finest. AANP's transformation essentially involves a belief system that blends / conflates ontological and epistemic types: which is neither transformative or reformative -- it is regressive.
002. the AANP wrote, in 1997's "The Alliance Legislative Workbook", directly to legislators:
"naturopathic physician's are the modern day science based primary care doctor [...] it is not a belief system."
Note: so, the science not belief label though really, they don't make that distinction on the inside.
