NEW RULE WILL HELP PATIENTS

The state Board of Medical Examiners on Saturday adopted a responsible regulation that will allow doctors the limited use of unconventional methods when treating patients. Dr. Gary Holt, a medical doctor who also is a homeopath, applauded the medical regulators' decision. "I've fixed a lot of patients whom conventional medicine could not fix," Holt told the board.

The regulation contains safeguards, requiring physicians who use nontraditional methods to follow set guidelines. For instance, patients must consent to the alternative treatment and physicians must maintain detailed records of when the treatments were used and their results.

Modern medicine for too long has resisted different approaches to healing patients. Sure, there are holistic methods that are unsound and should be rejected by any health care provider, but that doesn't mean all alternatives should be dismissed automatically. Some nontraditional treatments, once rejected, now are viewed favorably by doctors.

Pain management is an area that doctors increasingly have become receptive to when using alternative treatments. In the past many doctors feared using heavier doses of pain relievers for fear of being sanctioned by state medical licensing boards. Nevada's state Board of Medical Examiners, though, passed a regulation earlier this year that gave doctors flexibility to prescribe powerful drugs for their patients in severe pain, a compassionate rule that can help doctors alleviate the suffering of patients who either are critically ill or dying.

Earlier, in 1998, Nevadans overwhelmingly voted in favor of a referendum to amend the state's Constitution, allowing doctors to use marijuana, in limited circumstances, to control pain. Before the initiative goes into effect, however, it must be approved again in this year's general election. Even then it's unclear whether it will be implemented since federal law prohibits any use of marijuana, an issue the U.S. Supreme Court will consider this fall. Still, it is encouraging to see Nevada and other states acknowledge that alternative treatments can benefit patients.

Obviously medical boards shouldn't let physicians run wild without oversight. The key is to give physicians some degree of freedom to try methods that may have a realistic chance of working when conventional means fail. Nevada is headed forward with such a common-sense approach.