Herbal Essence

Like his field of specialty, Ted J. Kaptchuk, OMD, is, in a word, unconventional. Poised for a professional, intellectual interview at this Harvard Medical School (HMS) assistant professor’s home, I’m surprised when a young, sleepy-eyed boy answers the door. A bearded man with a black beret, plaid shirt and short ponytail—the man who’s asked me to please call him Ted—follows his son into the foyer. “Take off your shoes and come on in,” he says.

We walk into his paper-littered office, where Kaptchuk excuses himself to return to the phone call I’ve interrupted while his son returns to playing Warcraft II on his Macintosh. His home office is walled with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves sporting titles like Acupuncture in Practice, Life Against Death, Healing Powers and Revolution in Science. A green, beaten-up copy of the Kaptchuk-penned The Web That Has No Weaver peeks out from behind a small Chinese sculpture on the shelf. The book had a second edition released last year and is recognized as the most widely read book on Chinese medicine in a European language.

Finished with his call, he sits down on a worn burgundy sofa. “I’m not sure what I do. I do research. I watch people,” Kaptchuk muses. “The world I was trained in is pre-scientific. I try to use my training to function in both worlds.” A Columbia graduate, Kaptchuk became interested in alternative and Chinese traditional medicine in the sixties. “I didn’t want to do anything that could be considered collaboration,” he says, explaining the maverick tendencies that led him to earn his doctorate in Oriental Medicine from the Macau Institute of Chinese Medicine in 1975. In addition, Kaptchuk is licensed to practice acupuncture in 40 states. But what Kaptchuk casually fails to mention is his current status as a leading researcher for HMS’ frontier Division for Research and Education in Complementary and Integrative Medicine—a division that received a $10 million grant last spring from the Bernard Osher Foundation to further scientific research into the efficacy of non-traditional, integrative medicine.

Though Kaptchuk’s medical training is unique within his branch of HMS, he says he is comfortable not having an MD, and it’s not hard to see why. Kaptchuk is the bearer of two wordy titles: Assistant Professor at Harvard Medical School’s Division for Research and Education in Complementary and Integrative Medicine and Director of Complementary Specialties at the one-month-old Harvard Osher Institute. He also serves on the National Institute of Health’s National Advisory Council for Complementary and Alternative Medicine. Between his outfit, office and job, Kaptchuk makes for an interesting, if confusing, mix of academia and bohemia.

“I feel I’m a spokesperson for all nontraditional forms of medicine,” Kaptchuk says. “Medicine has been impoverished because they have not been included.”

Both HMS and the U.S. government seem to agree with him, as more and more funding is devoted to research in alternative medicine, marking a trend in the American public’s increased acceptance and adoption of these therapies. “Taking care of yourself in a spiritual way has become important to Americans,” Kaptchuk says. Studies published by researchers in Kaptchuk’s division have shown that in 1997 Americans spent an estimated $27 billion out-of-pocket on complementary care. By that same year, visits to non-traditional practitioners had increased nearly 50 percent from 1990, outnumbering visits to primary care medical doctors. Yet similar research shows that most Americans use complementary and alternative medicine in addition to and not instead of conventional medical care.

Professional acceptance of and interest in integrative and alternative medicine is a relatively new development; the HMS Division for Complementary and Integrative Medicine for which Kaptchuk works is not even two years old. But while skepticism as to the efficacy of complementary medicine remains, the field has made giant steps toward respectability—for many years such therapies were considered outright quackery.

Though Kaptchuk has worked at HMS for 12 years and served as the director of the Shattock Hospital Pain Clinic before then, his unconventional training meant less acceptance earlier in his career. “People brought me in because of my training in Chinese medicine,” he says. “But for many years people tried to keep me in the closet. People didn’t know how to deal with me.” But by publishing several scholarly articles and demonstrating his capacity as an expert researcher, Kaptchuk has climbed to the top of his field. “I think the Medical School is good about giving me space. I’ve demonstrated that I won’t do anything too bizarre,” he jokes.

In addition to being a master of traditional Chinese medicine, Kaptchuk is also an expert on the placebo effect—the phenomenon that results in people feeling healthier simply because they believe in the medicine they are using—and has published a number of articles on the subject. Kaptchuk continues to do research on the placebo effect, in addition to speaking, attending seminars and helping to run the Osher Foundation.

Despite all Kaptchuk’s success and his hopes about alternative medicine’s potential, Kaptchuk acknowledges that the future of his field is an uncertain one. “I’m a skeptic even though I’m a practitioner,” he says. “I’m not sure these therapies are most effective. They may work better on the fringe.”