Imagine you’re on a road trip with your family, and your vehicle happens to be the first to reach a new bridge. As you wait for the ribbon cutting ceremony to finish, you roll down the window and strike up a conversation with a nearby construction worker.
“Is the engineer here?” you ask.
“Oh, there’s no engineer,” the worker says. “This bridge was built by an Alternative Engineering practitioner who believes bridges are held up by vital anti-gravitational energy forces that flow through the earth and are channeled into the girders.”
You’re taken aback. “Well, that sounds kinda quirky” you rationalize, “but as long as it’s made with good steel and riveted together properly it should be fine, right?”
“Oh no,” the worker says, “The Alternative Engineer believes that using the weakest, thinnest steel beams will make the bridge even stronger. And he doesn’t believe in rivets. Rivets just address point loads – he views the bridge holistically.“
At this point you’d have to be insane to drive your family across this bridge, right? Yet, as absurd as this example sounds, it is exactly analogous to the type of “medicine” that the Alaska Legislature could legitimize and empower by passing Senate Bill 193 and House Bill 147, which would grant prescribing powers to naturopaths. Passing these bills would be a gross disservice to Alaskans, compounding problems caused by insufficient access to medical care by encouraging unwell people to seek help from an “alternative medicine” ecosystem rife with bogus treatments and medical quackery.
Alaska’s media sources have treated the years-long effort by naturopaths to gain prescribing powers with kid gloves, framing it as a dispute between legitimate medical providers about scope of care. This little animal will not. We need to be honest about what nauturopaths do.
Let’s start with homoeopahy. My god, homeopathy. However, bad you think this is, it’s worse.
Homeopathic “medicine” is created by taking substances that produce symptoms similar to those of the diseases they purport to treat, and then diluting them until virtually none of the “active ingredient” remains. Naturopaths claim that these homeopathic “treatments” work because the water or other substances used to dilute the “active ingredient” have a “memory.” For example, a homeopathic “medicine” claiming to cure pinkeye might take an herb that irritates your eyes and dilute it until no molecules of the herb are left. That’s it. That’s the whole thing. That is what homeopathy actually is.
Of course, there never has been, and never will be, a shred of evidence that this works (or, at least, works better than a placebo). If you’re thinking “homeopathy sounds like something made up by a grifter with no knowledge of modern medicine” you’d be correct. His name was Samuel Hahnemann, and he single-handedly concocted homeopathy out of thin air in the early 1800s. Homeopathy’s underlying philosophy and proposed mechanism of action are scientifically incoherent. Critics of homeopathy have mocked the practice by taking massive overdoses of homeopathic “treatments” (in one case, a million doses of homeopathic “sleep medication”) with no effect.
In short: with the knowledge we have here in 2026 it’s beyond question that homeopathy is a scam. And this scam causes real harm by encouraging real people suffering from real diseases to waste time and money (sometimes lots of money) on bogus homeopathic “treatments,” thereby delaying real care.
Yet Alaska’s naturopathic community — the very community now loudly waving their alleged medical credentials and clamoring for prescribing powers — apparently can’t get enough of the homeopathic snake oil. Virtually all of the members of the Alaska Association of Naturopathic Doctors, which is spearheading the effort to give naturopaths prescribing powers, publicly endorse homeopathy. Again, this is expensive fake “medicine” with no active ingredient, and it does nothing that an inert sugar pill or dropper full of distilled water wouldn’t do.
Naturopaths are quick to argue that they study scientific, evidence-based (what they often derisively call “allopathic“) medicine too. But as the example of homeopathy shows, naturopaths study and endorse methods of treating disease that aren’t just unscientific but are profoundly anti-scientific and would be considered malpractice in evidence-based medicine. Spend any time on websites or social media accounts run by naturopaths and you’ll find not just endorsements of homeopathy, but pseudo-religious claims about crystal vibrations, hydrotheraphy, magical energy fields, unapproved treatments for life-threatening diseases like cancer, and a near-endless stream of other types of quackery. You’ll also find a tremendous amount of scorn heaped on evidence-based medicine, which naturopaths falsely claim “just treats symptoms.”
At this point it should be clear, but it bears repeating anyway: naturopaths are not physicians (in Alaska, naturopaths are barred from using the term “physician” to describe themselves under statute § 08.45.050). Naturopaths do not go to medical school – they attend “naturopathic medical school.” Very few naturopaths complete residencies. An “ND” (doctor of naturopathy) is not equivalent to an MD (doctor of medicine). An MD studies medicine. An ND studies naturopathy. Apples to coconuts.
As naturopath-turned-whistleblower Britt Hermes has written, “The education and training of naturopathic practitioners has consistently been misrepresented by the profession and misreported by the media. Naturopathic training is often described as being on-par with that of medical school. This is not true. Naturopathic courses often have the same course titles as medical school courses, but the content comprises of alternative health information, not medical science.”
Regarding the decades-long attempt by naturpaths to usurp prescription powers from real medical professionals, Hermes is blunt: “[Naturopaths] want to be able to do everything an MD wants to do — but they also want to practice essentially witchcraft.”
Does that mean that everything naturopaths do is harmful? Of course not. Naturopaths often promote healthy behaviors related to exercise, diet, stress, etc. That’s all well and good. But you don’t need prescribing powers to tell someone to eat more fiber.
In March, the Anchorage naturopathic clinic Thrive Integrative Medicine posted on Instagram in support of HB147. The post was surrounded by others promoting sacred sound baths, energy balancing, and a “quartz crystal singing bowl experience.” An earlier post explains that “as humans our DNA, bones, blood, and fascia all have a crystalline structure that is responsive to sound vibrations created by crystal bowls.”
Now, this little animal does not begrudge anyone a good ol’ sacred sound bath. Honestly, it sounds relaxing. We all have our things, don’t we? But changing the law to push Alaskans into environments where pseudoscience is heavily promoted and sold (naturopathic clinics often run side hustles selling non-FDA-approved supplements directly to patients) will needlessly lead to delayed treatment, financial harm, and bad health outcomes for vulnerable and sometimes desperate people.
There’s no dispute that healthcare access in Alaska is inadequate. There is no dispute that healthcare in the United States generally is administered in ways that are inefficient and far too expensive. But we cannot meet real medical needs with fake treatments and anti-scientific woo woo, however well-intentioned. The sponsors of Senate Bill 193 and House Bill 147 should spend less time trying to expand the power and influence of naturopaths and instead focus on expanding access to high-quality evidence-based care for Alaskans who desperately need it.