Another Strategy for Defunding NCCAM
I have been as thrilled as others with the prospect of science regaining its rightful place as the driving ideology behind medical care in America, and I agree that defunding the wasteful and intellectually dishonest government agency known as the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine is an important start.
There is a nifty discussion on the blog Science-Based Medicine (which still hasn't been able to get rid of the sidebar ads for alternative medicine; I can't decide if this is funny or pitiful) that points out NCCAM is a political creation and as such, will require politics to successfully dismantle it. I believe another --additional -- strategy will be helpful:
If the next Surgeon General were to adopt the elimination of Quackery -- whether known as "alternative," "natural," "complementary" or "integrative" medicine -- as his or her major issue, that bully pulpit might help generate enough of a popular political groundswell to overcome the few credulous members of Congress who pushed the whole thing onto us in the first place.
Somehow, I don't think Sanjay Gupta is up for that, so I hope President Obama picks someone else.
posted by #1 Dinosaur @ 9:18 AM
4 comments
4 Comments:
As Carl Sagan put it, there is no complimentary or alternative or conventional medicine. There is medicine that works in a randomized trial, and that doesn't.
But....the wibble and the woo! They need a bail out!
A few years ago, my mother-in-law was complaining of a painful rash on her hip, which she was treating with over the counter ointments.
After over a week without relief, a family member convinced her that colloidal silver would solve her problem. My wife and I stepped in at this point and convinced her that she was dealing with something that required a professional. After a trip to her doctor, he started treatment for her shingles.
I don't think alternative medicine scares me nearly as much as the people that are willing to foresake science to fund what used to be known as snake oil.
As a nurse, I am grumpy that nurses are always trying to push for this crap and re-brand it as a "nursing" thing that we can and "should" do to help people. "Hey, you want to take this Reikki course or Healing Touch seminar?" Um, no.
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