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Books by Michael H. Cohen
on Legal Issues in Integrative Medicine
(Including Legal Issues Related to Medical Spas, Wellness Clinics, and Resorts)

People often ask me, “of all the books you've written, which one is best for me?”
Play this podcast for my answer.

Which book is best for me?
Complementary and Alternative Medicine (1998). This is the first book on the emerging moral and legal authority on which the safe and effective practice of complementary, alternative, and integrative health care can rest. The book covers regulatory legal issues from licensure and malpractice (both by MD's and by holistic health providers) to physician discipline. Originally published by Johns Hopkins University Press in 1998, it is still timely, laying the foundation for the major categories of legal rules applicable to integrative medicine.
Healing at the Borderland of Medicine and Religion. This 2006 book focuses on social, intellectual, and spiritual dimensions of integrative care and grounds the analysis in the attendant legal, regulatory, and institutional changes brought by integrative medicine. It will be of interest not only to physicians and other clinicians, health care institutions, and health care consumers, but also to scholars in philosophy, religion, and other disciplines in the humanities.

 
Legal Issues in Integrative Medicine: A Guide to Clinicians, Hospitals, and Patients (2005). Here is a practical guide for consumers, hospitals, doctors and lawyers about the legal (and sometimes institutional) ramifications of seeking, referring and using complementary and alternative therapies. Issues such as malpractice liability, informed consent, and advising patients on dietary supplements are included.
The Practice of Intergrative Medicine: A Legal and Operation Guide (2006). Based on interviews with over 20 health care providers and facilities who have successfully combined integrative medicine in their practices, this book outlines the pitfalls, legal road-blocks, and benefits of bringing complementary and integrative medicine into daily health care routines. Topics addressed include: What forces are driving the shift toward Integrative care; The key legal issues governing individuals vs. institutions; How established CIM institutions chose specific therapies, gained funding, and solved staffing issues; The regulations for credentialing and how to comply; Techniques for minimizing liability risks for institutions and individuals; Strategies for effective informed consent; Recommendations on dealing with the dietary supplement question.
In Beyond Complementary Medicine: Legal and Ethical Perspectives on Health Care and Human Evolution (2000), Michael H. Cohen goes deeper into the legal, ethical, and regulatory aspects of integrating complementary and alternative care such as acupuncture, chiropractic, naturopathy, massage therapy, dietary supplements, energy healing, and other therapies into conventional medical care. Michael addresses questions such as credentialing, malpractice, informed consent, and liability for referrals. He describes both practical strategies for minimizing liability, as well as the necessary future evolution of the legal and regulatory structure. Michael also probes uncharted ethical and bioethical issues in complementary medicine and integrative health care, and explores the connection between law, medicine, spirituality, and human evolution.
Future Medicine: Regulatory Challenges, and Therapeutic Pathways to Health Care and Healing in Human Transformation (2003) follows Beyond Complementary Medicine and takes the reader a bit deeper into energy healing, synthesizing insights from the world's great mystical traditions (the "perennial wisdom") with trends in law and medicine. Future Medicine describes a likely evolution of the legal system and the health care system at the crossroads of developments in the way human beings care for body, mind, emotions, environment, and soul.
A Question Of Time is my novel about consciousness, focusing on Ericksonian hypnosis and the journey within. It is based on actual experience, but fictionalized, and gradually shows the descent of the protagonist from external concerns into the dream landscape of the unconscious.
And finally, A Friend of all Faiths, a memoir of inner and outer life, bridging Wall Street, Berkeley, Harvard, the Iowa Writers' Workshop, and my simultaneous life as a lawyer and a seminarian.