(Editor's note: This article will also appear in the print version of the April 2005 issue of Acupuncture Today, but is being published online first based on the timeliness of the issue.)
When we last heard from Martin Herbkersman, LAc, Dipl. Ac. (NCCAOM), the Acupuncture Act of South Carolina sat on the governor's desk in a dust cloud of uncertainty. Hopes were high for the passage of the bill, but events took a turn for the worst before they improved -- the bill was vetoed! However, with great efforts on the part of Martin and his brother, State Representative Bill Herbkersman, the House and Senate overturned the governor's veto by a commanding margin: The House vote was 111 to 13, and the Senate vote was 31 to zero!
In mid-December, the governor vetoed the bill citing reasons of principle. Everyone understood the reasons. The governor of South Carolina is opposed to "bobtail amendments": amendments that may or may not be related to the original bill but are added to back of bills which are likely to pass. Two South Carolina senators had chosen to add the amendments to the original Acupuncture Act in an effort to keep their unrelated initiatives alive. In order to keep the bill from dying on the last day of the legislative session, the House voted to accept the new formation of the bill, but the governor would not hear of it. Further, the lobbyist working with Dr. Herbkersman needed to focus her attention on another client in the interim, and was no longer available. The South Carolina Acupuncture Act was unstable at best; thus, the task was left to Dr. Herbkersman and his brother, Bill.
In a state where the governor, the Senate, and the House are all Republicans, the House and Senate had to make a decision to overturn a decision made by one of their own. Representative Herbkersman rallied tirelessly to convince the senators and representatives to override the governor's veto. Representative Herbkersman's efforts, and the bipartisan nature of the bill, helped it to pass.
The Acupuncture Act of South Carolina:
Dr. Herbkersman reports that amazing events happened surrounding the passage of this bill, including one representative garnering support for a standing vote by turning to the legislators around him and saying, "Stand up! Stand up for the vote!"
Dr. Herbkersman cites the American Association of Oriental Medicine (AAOM) as being an important resource in the legislative process and recommends calling on the AAOM for model legislation and other help. His advice to aspiring acupuncture lobbyists: resilience. "Never give up. I would not have expected an overturn of the Governor's veto!" Dr. Herbkersman said. He also strongly suggests getting personally acquainted with your local legislators, and to offer them treatments whenever possible. Their personal experience of acupuncture is a great asset.
What is on Dr. Herbkersman's agenda for the future? "Protecting our new law," he stated. Dr. Herbkersman checks his state legislative site daily, searcing the site with "acupuncture" as a keyword. This tells him whether there are any other interested parties proposing new bills which may affect the profession in South Carolina. He encourages all state associations to do the same in their efforts to protect their scope of practice.
Chronic pain afflicts over 20% of the adult population. Sadly, most MDs have essentially no education in treating pain, beyond offering a few toxic medications. Then they tend to steer people with pain away from those health practitioners who are trained. This puts the acupuncture community on the front lines for addressing this epidemic.
When the body is going through a stressful event, the sympathetic system is activated. This activation will help the body with a life-threatening situation. If this state is activated for prolonged periods of time, it starts to consume energy. These traumatic events that generate stressors in the autonomic nervous system (ANS) will eventually become internalized.
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One of the things that makes acupuncture so difficult to measure is that the medicine actually does contain some esoteric aspects. There have been numerous studies that demonstrate the neurochemical reasoning behind why acupuncture points stimulate the autonomic nervous system to enact change However, not all the benefits of TCM can easily be measured by randomized, controlled trials. But does that make them fundamentally and definitively untrue?
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