Osteopathy Vs Quackery

The most sever challenge to jurisdiction boundaries that the medical profession has ever experienced was from the doctors of osteopathy. This battle was referred to as “quackery”. The term quack was given to the doctors of osteopath for their lower educational standards and their use of methods and treatments that had no scientific validity per research conducted in the early 1900’s by Abraham Flexner (Bailey). Today, there is little mention of a line of distinction between Doctors of Allopathy (MD.) and Doctors of Osteopathy (DO.). The reason for this lack of differentiation is not because of any changes to academic rigor, but instead it is due to a long and bitter legal battle many would rather forget.
The legal victory was claimed

The MD’s have historically viewed DO’s negatively since they believed that the sub-par education DO’s received was nothing more that “cultist healing” (Gevitz), which is why the American Medical Association (AMA) had implemented a mandatory boycott of all professional associations with DO’s since the late nineteenth century (Osteopaths). As the negative publicity spread, the DO’s began to lose public support. In response to the loss of support and ensued loss of income, the California Osteopathic Association (COA) decided to meet with the California Medical Association (CMA) to discuss options to consolidate both professions. The outcome of the meeting was promising, and in 1962 a contract was drawn between the associations, a vote was carried out by the House of Delegates, and the merger of the two organizations was approved. The DO’s would become MD’s after completing additional educational training provided by MD’s and a small fee of $65 for

In 2012, a committee of private foundations was formed to analyze the government and finances of the Graduate Medical Education (GME) program which is funded primarily by Medicare with support from the Department of Veteran Affairs and the Resource and Service Administration. GME was established in 1965 to provide continual funding for medical school residents who can provide medical care for Medicare beneficiaries. The committee tasked with the analysis of GME came up with a proposal to completely transform the current accreditation system by merging the two current GME MD and DO accreditations system into one competency based system called ACGME (Single GME). Due to this merger, sociologist Norman Gevitz PhD. has predicted the demise of the osteopathic specialist that would eventually lead to the complete disintegration of the Osteopathic profession (Gevitz, 2014). Although Gevitz is a renowned medical sociologist and historian, the DO’s have disregarded his warning and in response have stated that Gevitz’s claims are unfounded since he sailed to consult with AACOM or AOA leadership. At the moment, there are no additional updates in the status of the DO’s school’s applications for accreditation into ACGME, but the deadline is set for December, 31st, 2016 by which date all applications to be submitted to