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.
Misha Cohen, OMD, LAc
Misha Ruth Cohen, OMD, LAc, has practiced Asian traditional medicine for 25 years. She is the director of Chicken Soup Chinese Medicine; Research and Education Chair for Quan Yin Healing Arts Center; and a research specialist at the UC San Francisco Institute for Health and Aging. Dr. Cohen has lectured throughout the world and is a respected expert in chronic diseases and Chinese medicine. She has spent the past 19 years researching and developing comprehensive programs for the treatment of HIV/AIDS, HCV, cancer and related disorders. She is the co-author, along with Dr. Robert Gish, of the Hepatitis C Help Book, published by St. Martin's.