Is it my personal choice as an individual, to choose which experienced Doctor will serve as ‘My Doctor’, (Regular or Alternative)?
Question:
A while back, I was advising a friend of mine, (suffering from various, multiple medical issues) to seek out the advice of an experienced successful Doctor, who uses “Alternative Medicine”.
My Friend responded to me by saying that someone had mentioned to him that “he heard” that the Rebbe always advised people to follow (only?) the Standard Medical Doctors, to the Exclusion of Alternative Medicine, which is not considered to be the Official Mainstream MD type of Doctors.
I was very surprised to hear that and I assumed that it’s likely not true, and even if yes, perhaps it was a Horaah Protis, as a Yotze Min Haklal, but not as a general rule.
Especially because, this very same friend himself, had told me, that he himself had asked the Rebbe himself, what to do for his own medical condition (and he himself did not even mention alternative healing) and the Rebbe on his own initiative, had suggested that for his health condition he should use the healing method of Acupuncture and Diet (Acupuncture is something standard MD’s hardly if ever, and standard MD’s don’t consider it, as a valid viable alternative, to what they learn in school, and no standard MD even knows how to do it).
Anyway, to verify, I went over to Rabbi Gronner personally and asked him directly, whether or not it’s true that the Rebbe ever answered people to use (or not use) Alternative Medical doctors, or did the Rebbe perhaps at least GENERALLY, AS A RULE, advise people not to use Alternative Medical Doctors?
Rabbi Gronner answered me:
Not only did the Rebbe (permit) allow people to use Alternative Doctors on rare occasions, “sometimes”, but rather it happened “ALL THE TIME”, with countless such questions to the Rebbe and the Rebbe approved and didn’t have any problem with it.
The above are Sipurim…. But I’m asking L’Halacha:
Am I correct in my assumption, that although Halacha requires that we listen to a Doctor, yet it’s my personal choice as an individual, to choose which experienced Doctor will serve as ‘My Doctor’, (Regular or Alternative) as long as he has a good, strong, established record as Mumche, of successfully healing people Bepoal Mamash?
Answer:
See the references there too with multiple sources from the Rebbe.
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