Bringing up the iatrogenic illness\\casualty argument doesn\'t work here. No one is keeping an eye on NDs to know the ratio of negative events to number of patients seen. In NJ, there have been a number of problems with the handful of NPs, grads of accredited schools. The nature of allopathic medicine being an intervention when things have gone to far set it up for the high number of deaths, drug reactions and complications that occur.

In both fields, similar methods of researching therapies can lead to patients being the Phase IV general population that we see with conventional pharmaceutical research and marketing. Many \"natural\" therapies are based on theory, ad hoc fallacy, and just plain bad research (small sample sizes, biased studies - same as conventional). One only need look at the supposed miracle of soy foods to see that this is an industry-driven revenue maker for the natural health industry.

And there is the flake factor. NDs cross the line when they start addressing psychological, emotional and spiritual reasons for physiological imbalances.

The fact that medical doctors know little or nothing about nutrition does not mean a patient cannot go to a nutritionist or dietician. Having worked in both alternative medicine and conventional medicine, it is not unusual for patients to be referred to nutritionists for obesity, diabetes, etc. The Biochemistry researchers are now finding more and more evidence regarding diet and health that the alternative field has speculated about. Blaming a physician, who has been trained in basically last resort medicine, is like complaining you got pizza and not Chinese food at an Italian restaurant.

Naturopaths have been very silent in NJ, possibly because of the licensing issue. But if they are not practicing medicine, then why aren\'t they writing about their research and findings in local papers, giving seminars, etc. Mainstream medicine does it, massage therapists do it, acupuncturists do it. There wasn\'t one ND at the very popular Integrated Medicine Conference last October. There were no abstracts of research in the conference binder. There was not even one reference to any research, informal studies, or anything done by naturopaths.

NDs in this state have claimed that licensing is imminent, yet the licensing board laughs at the notion, since there are only a handful and the licensing boards will not take the time to oversee them. So why lie about this.

Present and past students are complaining (as students are wont to do) about the flakey nature of the training, the lack of good clinical experience, but instead of addressing these issues, we get the stale argument about how bad MDs are.

Perhaps NDs could present how they can work WITH MDs, who don\'t have the time or training to do what NDs supposedly are doing.