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It's easy to mistake the interior of Dr. Daren Chen's Fremont clinic for a Western doctor's office: the beds and neatly
folded sheets are spotless. Wall charts display nervous systems and muscle groups. Chen and his assistant glide in and
out of sterile examination rooms in doctors' whites. No menacing needles, no smoky cauldrons and no black magic in sight.
But to the general population of thirty some years ago, traditional oriental medicine was just that - voodoo needle-sticking,
enveloped in hazy herbal smoke - and not much more in the eyes of the law. Today, however, practitioners celebrated
acupuncture's recent re-inclusion into the workers compensation program, a hard-fought victory 30 years after SB 86, the
California bill that effectively legalized acupuncture in 1975.
But to 73-year-old Chen, formerly the inaugural president of the Council of Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine Associations,
and perhaps the Bay Area's most distinguished and respected acupuncturist, the continuing struggles of his profession
weigh down his thoughts. During the quiet moments of the day, after the patients leave and he sits in his dark office
save one desk lamp, Chen sees a picture on the wall of his much younger, energetic self, beaming alongside former Gov.
Jerry Brown after a successful lobby, and those victories suddenly seem faded by the passage of 32 years.
The truth is that the victories of those old legislative battles are fragile, and the three-way struggles between the
politically active - though hardly invincible - acupuncture council, insurance companies and physician organizations,
hang in flimsy balance in Sacramento. The current picture may not look so rosy for supporters of acupuncture, warns Dr.
Chen, and battles over acupuncture will rage on with no end in sight.
Workers' compensation reform in 2004 proved to be a significant setback for acupuncture, as a new set of guidelines
developed by the American College of Occupational and Environmental Medicine effectively removed the procedure from the
list of claimable workers compensation benefits.
"It specifically pointed out many, many, treatments, like acupuncture, that are 'not effective' for many conditions, so
the insurance companies denied all these patients when they wanted to see acupuncturists," Chen recalls.
In response, Assemblywoman Judy Chu (D-Monterey Park), pushed for AB 2877, a bill that would have modified guidelines to
put acupuncture back into workers' comp. Despite heavy pressure from insurance agencies, the bill passed on the Senate
floor but was ultimately vetoed in late 2006 by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who many had believed to be sympathetic
towards the acupuncture lobby.
Schwarzenegger said in a statement: "Although I support the intention of this bill, I cannot support codifying treatment
guidelines for specific types of treatment... Because of the importance of acupuncture treatment, I am directing the
Division of Workers' Compensation to take whatever steps necessary ... to ensure that acupuncture regains its rightful
place as a readily available treatment for injured workers."
President of the Association of California Insurance Companies, Sam Sorich, says that the insurers' opposition was not
based on an objection toward acupuncture, but motivated more or less by principle.
"We did not think that the legislature should adopt guidelines for acupuncture or any other treatment because that should
be done by the administrative agency," he says. "It's not appropriate for the legislature to do that."
The tide changed again in June, when the Division of Workers' Compensation, at the urging of the governor, passed new
Acupuncture Medical Treatment Guidelines. As of June 29, acupuncture was reinstated into workers' comp, which was hailed
as a significant development in the greater sphere of alternative medicine.
However, defeat in Sacramento is a more frequent occurrence.
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Gerry Shih