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Open letter to the RX Committee of the BAOM, the Board of the BAOM, and anyone interested in the subject. - By Dr. Bettina Sellers:

We have traveled a long rough road with the subject of RX in our profession. I have been part of  it during the last 3 to 4 years, and would like to focus for once on what unites us and what we can agree upon rather than all that black and white business of “us versus them.”  It has not gotten us anywhere.
J. Trapp and I introduced the modular approach to the RX Committee of the BAOM in November 2004. At that time, Fiquet Duckworth was the chair of the RX Committee. She suggested to take it back to the association to get a consensus, which we did, and it went through the legislature last March and got signed off by the governor. Now it has been stuck with the BAOM Board, or RX Committee, for one reason or other for a whole year. The latest issue has been the formularies. So much for the history.
I would like to put all of this a little bit more into perspective. We are all DOMs, right? We do Oriental medicine, which is a holistic medicine. Most of us have 3 to 4 years basic training; some of the older DOMs had 2 years. Many of us worked for many years in the profession before we even considered the RX option. Now, in my case, I want to learn more about bioidentical hormones, for many reasons. I am also an experienced herbalist; I have my own herb company - Mountain Meadows - since 13 years.  I do like Oriental medicine, but I also like to expand my horizons. Now, because of my above background, why would I choose hormones as my first line of action over Oriental medicine treatments? I would most certainly not! There are so many other options I would try first. Hormones are, however, another level of knowledge and possible treatment, and should be used only if we don’t get anywhere with all our other treatments.
Most criticisms of formularies imply a recklessness on the side of the practitioner, as if one would throw the most dangerous medicines at just about anybody. Of course not. You would look at it with your Oriental medicine background and weigh all the options. My goal is to use as little of the hormones as I can get away with, since they are potentially dangerous medicines. They are much to too new (compared to Chinese medicine) to know their side effects over time. If you compare our background to that of an MD or a nurse practitioner, our options are more numerous and versatile from the onset.
Contained in the proposed teaching segment of the hormones is a 14-hour part that gets into non-hormonal alternatives, which of course includes herbs, Chinese medicine, chi gung and so on. Also, the formularies will be taught by a pharmacist, so there are a lot of safety catches here. I hope you can consider this in your deliberations.

Thanks,

Bettina Sellers, DOM