Bio of Michael H. Cohen

Michael H. Cohen has distinguished himself in both legal and medical academe. He has over 70 publications, including articles in the Arizona Law Review, Arizona State Law Journal, Cincinnati Law Review, Indiana Law Review, and Vermont Law Review; in interdisciplinary journals such as Journal of Medical Ethics, Journal of Law & Religion, and Harvard’s Negotiation Journal; in peer-reviewed medical journals such as Annals of Internal Medicine, Medical Journal of Australia, Journal of Epilepsy & Behavior, and Clinical Researcher; and forthcoming in the Archives of Internal Medicine, Pediatrics, and St. John’s Law Review. He has also authored numerous book chapters, and three scholarly books: Complementary and Alternative Medicine: Legal Boundaries and Regulatory Perspectives (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998); Beyond Complementary Medicine: Legal and Ethical Perspectives on Health Care and Human Evolution (University of Michigan Press, 2000); and Future Medicine: Ethical Dilemmas, Regulatory Challenges, and Therapeutic Pathways to Health and Healing in Human Transformation (University of Michigan Press. 2003). 

Cumulatively, this body of scholarly work has given him national visibility in integrative and energy medicine—and in health care more generally. For example, he was recently asked to serve as the legal consultant to the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences for its Committee on Complementary and Alternative Medicine Use by the American Public. He has also served for four years as Director of Legal Programs in Harvard Medical School’s Division for Research and Education in Complementary and Integrative Medicine, spearheading a variety of projects, from legal and regulatory issues in integration of complementary and alternative medical (CAM) therapies (such as acupuncture, chiropractic, massage therapy, herbal therapy, and naturopathy) into the Harvard hospital system, to intellectual property issues in international collaboration for research of herbal products.

His ability to bridge the legal and medical communities, both professionally and as a legal scholar, is unique. As such, his work as an Assistant Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School has received support from such funding agencies as the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine at the National Institutes of Health (NIH); Medtronic Foundation, Inc., Minneapolis; Hospital for Sick Children Foundation, Toronto; The Epilepsy Foundation, Virginia; Rudolph Steiner Foundation, San Francisco; and the Ministry of Science and Research of Northrhine-Westphalia, Germany. He has also garnered grants as Principal Investigator in two projects, one funded by the National Library of Medicine at the NIH, and the other by the Greenwall Foundation in New York. His interdisciplinary interests furthered earned him a Fortieth Anniversary Senior Fellowship at the Center for the Study of World Religions at Harvard Divinity School. Michael’s professional background is equally impressive. He received his BA from Columbia University, his JD and MBA from the University of California, Berkeley, and, more unusually, his MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. He served as a law clerk to Judge Thomas P. Griesa in the Southern District of New York, and practiced corporate law in the Wall Street law firm of Davis Polk & Wardwell. He taught a specialized seminar on legal and policy aspects of integrative medicine—the first of its kind in U.S. law schools, later refined for the Harvard School of Public Health—and also taught such law school courses as Civil Procedure, Conflicts of Laws, Constitutional Law, Criminal Law, and Insurance Law. He has lectured at Harvard Medical School, and at medical schools across the country.