[escepticos] Scientists to Congress: Fund alternative medicine

["Claudio Andr\is Uribe" <cauribe@...>]

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Scientists to Congress: Fund alternative medicine

WASHINGTON (Reuter) - Doctors and scientists argued for better government
support for alternative medicine Thursday, saying it needed to be treated
seriously. 

People are using alternative and complementary medicine anyway, so it
should be researched as thoroughly as any other branch of medicine, they
told a Senate subcommittee. 

"We are in the midst of a revolution in the practice of medicine and a
transformation in the kind of health care Americans want and receive," said
James Gordon, a psychiatry and family medicine professor at Georgetown
University. 

"For tens of millions of Americans, it is no longer a question of either
modern science or ancient wisdom, but of combining both in a new, richer,
more effective and more humane synthesis," Gordon told the Senate Labor and
Human Resources Subcommittee on Public Health and Safety. 

The subcommittee was considering whether to create a National Center for
Complementary and Alternative Medicine Research, on a par with other
National Institutes of Health (NIH) agencies such as the National Institute
of Mental Health and the National Institute of Allergies and Infectious
Diseases. 

There is an Office of Alternative Medicine (OAM), but witnesses testifying
to the panel said this was underfunded and did not have the needed clout to
do the right research. 

"The OAM needs to become the National Center for Complementary and
Alternative Medicine, an independent NIH body with its own granting
capacity and with an advisory council that has the authority to approve
these grants," Gordon said. 

Gordon said the interest in and need for more research was clear. "Between
12,000 and 14,000 acupuncturists of all races practice in the United
States, and some 3,000 are physicians," he said. 

"Massage therapy is a growing profession whose practitioners are providing
relief from stress, enhancing the mood of depressed patients, and giving
help to those with cancer and post-operative pain," he said. 

One-third of U.S. medical schools offered courses on alternative therapies,
he added. 

David Eisenberg of Harvard Medical School said half of all "baby boomers"
now aged 30 to 55 used alternative therapies. "There is an enormous popular
demand," he said. "There is a paucity of satisfactory research." 

There were no standards for using herbs, for example, and no system of
licensing practitioners. No one knew what herbs or vitamins might be toxic.


"Think for a moment about the millions of Americans who have cancer and who
simultaneously take chemotherapy as well as herbs and supplements," he
said. "It is conceivable that in some instances chemotherapy will interact
in an adverse fashion with some herbs, supplements or radical diets." 

Robert Rich, vice president of the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston,
pointed out that the NIH in recent weeks announced it was funding trials to
test whether the herb St John's wort was useful in treating depression. 

He said the NIH spent $43.7 million in 1996 to support research on
alternative medicine. 

(Reuters/Wired) 
__________________________________________
Claudio Uribe
cauribe en sanbernardo.com.ar
Santa Teresita, Buenos Aires
ARGENTINA