A student stands over a patient, needle poised. They have a “perfect” prescription: a textbook combination of points harvested from a lecture slide on chronic lower back pain. But as the needle meets the skin, the student hesitates - the symptom of a quiet habit that has taken hold of our profession. We routinely say we “prescribe” points. It sounds efficient. It echoes the authority of biomedical culture and fits neatly into the insurance field. But vocabulary is never neutral; repeated long enough, it dictates behavior.
Brian Carter, MSCi, LAc
Brian Benjamin Carter is an acupuncturist, herbalist, author, speaker, and consumer health advocate. His passion is to explain Oriental medicine to the layperson. Since 1999, hundreds of thousands of readers all over the world have visited his Pulse of Oriental Medicine (www.pulsemed.org), and read his more than 200 articles. Brian has also written for Massage & Bodywork Magazine, and consulted with national media, including Glamour, Real Simple, Christian Singles, and ESPN magazines. He is currently working with his literary agent on a series of Chinese medicine books for the layperson.
Brian humbly hopes to help expand the vision and increase the skills of Chinese medicine professionals, and is devoted in the long-run to raising personal and academic standards, and to integrating Chinese and western medicine.
To further his development in body, mind, and spirit, Brian keeps his head in the Chinese classics and MEDLINE, his heart in the Hebrew and Greek of the Christian Bible, and his body in rock climbing and basketball. He hopes one day to be the oldest, shortest player ever to be drafted into the National Basketball Association.
Brian lives in sunny San Diego, California, with his wife, Lynda Harvey-Carter, and their two wonderful kittens.