By most accounts, there are approximately 3,000 practitioners of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM), including acupuncturists, in the province of Ontario. Most are in Toronto - home to Canada's largest Chinese community - where they can be found in virtually every neighbourhood. Their lives are about to change. Last week, Ontario became the second province (after British Columbia) to pass legislation to regulate TCM and traditional acupuncture. This has bitterly divided the TCM community. No one, of course, objects to putting traditional medicine on a professional footing. How could they, when even Beijing regulates TCM and the trend to health-profession status is sweeping North America and Europe. Allowing for the creation of a regulatory body to set standards can only help in the long run. It will almost certainly open the TCM door to a raft of new western clients who are clearly intrigued but unsure about whom to trust. At the same time, change of this magnitude is bound to cause some hurt. Many of the newer TCM practitioners here hail from some of the best training institutions in the world. Most, though, have simply taken over a family business, one that has been operating quietly here for 50 years or more, offering herbal remedies and other treatments. They have inherited the suppliers, the family lore and the client base. But they are clearly afraid that they won't be able to pass any new licensing exams in the years ahead. Fear is a powerful motivator. But the bigger emotion, the one that has so many Chinese professionals uncharacteristically up in arms, seems to have more to do with respect. That has impelled them to form the Ontario Coalition for Unbiased Regulation on Acupuncture and TCM. In its own clumsy way, the Ontario government tried to confront these concerns. The law is to set up a new, self-governing profession for TCM and acupuncture, and it contains a provision that will allow particularly well-trained members to use the title of 'doctor'. But these would be doctors with a difference. TCM practitioners would have no right to communicate a diagnosis, prescribe or dispense herbal compounds, fix broken limbs or, essentially, do anything beneath the skin. What's more, there is to be no TCM monopoly over acupuncture, that great gift of the east. Other western professionals - physiotherapists, chiropractors and the like - employ needles in their work. And this won't change even though they have, and will continue to have, much less rigorous training than TCM acupuncturists. The government says it sees no reason to change the rules for these other western practitioners, who already have professional bodies that sanction the use of acupuncture. The implication is that these groups were there first to use it. But, you know, they really weren't.
