Federal center pays good money for suspect medicine

Feds dole out millions of dollars for questionable studies on treatments ranging from energy healing to acupuncture

Thanks to a $374,000 taxpayer-funded grant, we now know that inhaling lemon and lavender scents doesn’t do a lot for our ability to heal a wound. With $666,000 in federal research money, scientists examined whether distant prayer could heal AIDS. It could not.

A Tribune examination of hundreds of NCCAM grants, dozens of scientific papers, 12 years of NCCAM documents and advisory council meeting minutes found that the center has spent millions of taxpayer dollars on studies with questionable grounding in science. The cancer treatment involving coffee enemas was based on an idea from the early 1900s, and patients who chose to undergo the risky regimen lived an average of just four months.

“Lots of good science and good scientists are going unfunded,” said Dr. David Gorski, a breast cancer researcher at Wayne State University, who has been a vocal critic of NCCAM. “How can we justify wasting money on something like this when there are so many other things that are much more plausible and much more likely to result in real benefit?”

http://www.chicagotribune.com/health/ct-met-nccam-overview-20111211,0,1371814,full.story

Editor’s Commentary:  Look people.  Either it is medicine, or it is not.  There is no “Eastern Medicine” or “Alternative Medicine” – just medicine.  If a pharmaceutical company released a chemical compound with the same complete lack of testing and trials that “herbal” medicines follow – the liabilities and uproar would be unprecedented.  BUT, you can sell any combination of chemicals herbal supplements that are not regulated or tested and make all sorts of outlandish claims and that is not a problem!?  I don’t care if you want to believe in energy healing.  I don’t care if you want to spend money and have people stick pins in your body to fix mystical energy flows (which have never been observed, have no rational basis to exist and have never been proven to do anything). As far as anyone should be concerned, if you want to observe non-scientific rituals which do not meet the standards of medicine (see above – there should only be ONE standard) – then as far as I am concerned, this is no more than a religious ritual.

However, I do take exception for paying for your magical thinking.  My health insurance costs are as high as everyone’s. My insurance costs should cover medicine, not religion. My tax dollars should support medical research, not religion or magical mystery tours!

Stop the nonsense.  If you want to practice ritualistic healing.  Go for it – just don’t ask me to pay.