By Richard Wronski
Tribune Staff Writer
February 12, 2001

Jake the police dog made a low, menacing sound as veterinarian Dr. Laurie McCauley slipped several needles through his thick, black coat into his massive neck.

"I know he's better because he's growling," said McHenry County Deputy Sheriff Andrew Zinke, a true believer in acupuncture for Jake's sore back.

But alternative medicine is raising more ominous rumbles these days among the 65,000 members of the Schaumburg-based American Veterinary Medical Association.

A feud is brewing between conventional animal doctors and those who think their furry patients benefit by alternative practices, from chiropractic adjustments to aromatherapy.

As unconventional therapies become more popular, the association's leadership is promoting new guidelines that would label such treatments "unproven practices," which could push some states to restrict licensed veterinarians' options.

The debate parallels a longstanding split in human health care. While two-legged patients and, increasingly, their insurers embrace alternative therapies, the human medical establishment, especially the American Medical Association, continues to limit its support to treatments it believes can be scientifically proven.

For the vets, the stakes and the hackles are rising.

Los Angeles-area veterinarian Dr. David Ramey, a member of the AVMA task force that wrote the guidelines, said it is crucial to toughen the association's stance toward alternative therapies.

"There's no good evidence that sticking a needle in one spot is any better than another spot," he said. "We're in a profession that is based on science, and science has rules that you play by."

But proponents of alternative veterinary medicine believe the science-based practitioners are sticking their heads in the sand. McCauley, for one, is alarmed.

"For the veterinary field to be backtracking as the human field is getting bigger is ludicrous," said McCauley, a Grayslake veterinarian who specializes in rehabilitation therapy for dogs, using acupuncture, chiropractic and what she says is a first-of-its-kind underwater treadmill.

Veterinarians such as McCauley fear new guidelines would make such animal care less respected and harder to obtain, because states look to the AVMA in setting standards for licensing veterinarians.

"To say we're polarized is putting it mildly," AVMA staff member Craig Smith said. "There are strongly held opinions on both sides. Everyone falls on one side or another."

Smith said it is difficult to estimate how many veterinarians practice alternative therapy. They belong to such organizations as the 550-member American Academy of Veterinary Acupuncture, the 800-member American Holistic Veterinary Medical Association and the American Veterinary Chiropractic Association, among others.

Their practices cover a wide spectrum, from the relatively intuitive -- using garlic to ward off fleas -- to the exotic, such as the use of Bach flower remedies, named after an early 20th Century doctor who believed human emotional excesses could be treated with herbs. Bach flower remedies, often ground up and diluted in a brandy solution, are sometimes given to show dogs and horses to soothe them, one vet said. Similarly, aromatherapy uses the scent of oils to manipulate the emotional state of animals.

Some remedies, such as acupuncture, have been around (in human treatment) for thousands of years, while others, such as aromatherapy, are new to humans and newer to pets.

Often the treatments are little different from their human counterparts; while some people wear wrist bands with magnets in hopes of stimulating blood flow, a horse with joint pain or a muscle tear might have his leg wrapped in a piece of cloth with magnets sewn into it.

For Jake, the 9-year-old German shepherd who has arthritis, bi-monthly treatment means 11 acupuncture needles strategically placed on his back and neck, drawing hardly a flinch. McCauley hooks each needle to a low-voltage electrical current, a therapy that she says regenerates nerves. The treatment lasts about 20 minutes.

Guidelines adopted in 1996 by the AVMA approved of some practices, for example calling acupuncture "an integral part of veterinary medicine" and saying chiropractic "can be beneficial." But this language is gone from the new proposals, which state that unless scientific data on the safety and efficacy of alternative and complementary therapies are obtained, "veterinarians should be careful in their advocacy of unproven practices."

"My feeling is there is a group of veterinarians who feel that all types of alternative and complementary medicine are just plain wrong," said Dr. Priscilla Taylor-Limehouse, a Los Angeles-area veterinarian who is president of the American Academy of Veterinary Acupuncture. "They'd like to use this as a forum to make their feelings known and change policy as much as possible."

Taylor-Limehouse also objects to the way the guidelines lump all alternative therapies together.

"We don't feel that acupuncture is on a par with such modalities as aromatherapy," she said.

Taylor-Limehouse contends that the AVMA proposals are in complete contradiction with a 1997 statement on human treatment from the National Institutes of Health that said "sufficient evidence of acupuncture's value exists to expand its use into conventional medicine."

Nonetheless, the American Medical Association's policy on alternative medicine seems to be in line with the AVMA proposals, stating, "There is little evidence to confirm the safety or efficacy of most alternative therapies."

"No one on the committee wants to keep effective therapy from sick animals," said Ramey, the Los Angeles veterinarian who helped draft the guidelines. "But the flip side is that through history, all sorts of therapies have come and gone and been popular and then discarded. We don't want to play that game."

Smith said the AVMA gets about 25 letters a day from veterinarians and pet owners unhappy with the proposed guidelines and is accepting comments until Thursday. He said the task force will consider objections and other comments before sending a final version to the AVMA's executive board and house of delegates for approval as early as July.

Third-generation Barrington Hills veterinarian Dr. John Hanover -- whose patients include the horses at Medieval Times in Schaumburg, which he treats with chiropractic and magnetic therapy -- said the goal should be what is best for the animals.

"They're saying we're not supposed to be doing this, even though it's working," Hanover said. "People who practice this way have nothing but the animals' interest at heart. We want them to get as well as we can."