$2.5 billion spent, no alternative cures found Big, government-funded studies show most work no better than placebos The Associated Press updated 12:15 p.m. ET, Wed., June 10, 2009
BETHESDA, Md. - Ten years ago the government set out to test herbal and other alternative health remedies to find the ones that work. After spending $2.5 billion, the disappointing answer seems to be that almost none of them do.
Echinacea for colds. Ginkgo biloba for memory. Glucosamine and chondroitin for arthritis. Black cohosh for menopausal hot flashes. Saw palmetto for prostate problems. Shark cartilage for cancer. All proved no better than dummy pills in big studies funded by the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine. The lone exception: ginger capsules may help chemotherapy nausea.
As for therapies, acupuncture has been shown to help certain conditions, and yoga, massage, meditation and other relaxation methods may relieve symptoms like pain, anxiety and fatigue.
However, the government also is funding studies of purported energy fields, distance healing and other approaches that have little if any biological plausibility or scientific evidence.
Taxpayers are bankrolling studies of whether pressing various spots on your head can help with weight loss, whether brain waves emitted from a special "master" can help break cocaine addiction, and whether wearing magnets can help the painful wrist problem, carpal tunnel syndrome.
The acupressure weight-loss technique won a $2 million grant even though a small trial of it on 60 people found no statistically significant benefit -- only an encouraging trend that could have occurred by chance. The researcher says the pilot study was just to see if the technique was feasible.
"You expect scientific thinking" at a federal science agency, said R. Barker Bausell, author of "Snake Oil Science" and a research methods expert at the University of Maryland, one of the agency's top-funded research sites. "It's become politically correct to investigate nonsense."
Many scientists say that unconventional treatments hold promise and deserve serious study, but that the federal center needs to be more skeptical and selective.
"There's not all the money in the world and you have to choose" what most deserves tax support, said Barrie Cassileth, integrative medicine chief at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York.
"Many of the studies that have been funded I would not have funded because they seem irrational and foolish -- studies on distant healing by prayer and energy healing, studies that are based on precepts and ideas that are contrary to what is known in terms of human physiology and disease," she said.
In an interview last year, shortly after becoming the federal center's new director, Dr. Josephine Briggs said it had a strong research record, and praised the many "big name" scientists who had sought its grants. She conceded there were no big wins from its first decade, other than a study that found acupuncture helped knee arthritis. That finding was called into question when a later, larger study found that sham treatment worked just as well.
"The initial studies were driven by some very strong enthusiasms, and now we're learning about how to layer evidence" and to do more basic science before testing a particular supplement in a large trial, said Briggs, who trained at Ivy League schools and has a respected scientific career.
"There are a lot of negative studies in conventional medicine," and the government's outlay is small compared to drug company spending, she added.
However, critics say that unlike private companies that face bottom-line pressure to abandon a drug that flops, the federal center is reluctant to admit a supplement may lack merit -- despite a strategic plan pledging not to equivocate in the face of negative findings.
Echinacea is an example. After a large study by a top virologist found it didn't help colds, its fans said the wrong one of the plant's nine species had been tested. Federal officials agreed that more research was needed, even though they had approved the type used in the study.
"There's been a deliberate policy of never saying something doesn't work. It's as though you can only speak in one direction," and say a different version or dose might give different results, said Dr. Stephen Barrett, a retired physician who runs Quackwatch, a web site on medical scams.
Critics also say the federal center's research agenda is shaped by an advisory board loaded with alternative medicine practitioners. They account for at least nine of the board's 18 members, as required by its government charter. Many studies they approve for funding are done by alternative therapy providers; grants have gone to board members, too.
"It's the fox guarding the chicken coop," said Dr. Joseph Jacobs, who headed the Office of Alternative Medicine, a smaller federal agency that preceded the center's creation. "This is not science, it's ideology on the part of the advocates."
Briggs defended their involvement.
"If you're going to do a study on acupuncture, you're going to need acupuncture expertise," she said. These therapists "are very much believers in what they do," not unlike gastroenterologists doing a study of colonoscopy, and good study design can guard against bias, she said.
The center was handed a flawed mission, many scientists say.
Congress created it after several powerful members claimed health benefits from their own use of alternative medicine and persuaded others that this enormously popular field needed more study. The new center was given $50 million in 1999 (its budget was $122 million last year) and ordered to research unconventional therapies and nostrums that Americans were using to see which ones had merit.
That is opposite how other National Institutes of Health agencies work, where scientific evidence or at least plausibility is required to justify studies, and treatments go into wide use after there is evidence they work -- not before.
"There's very little basic science behind these things. Most of it begins with a tradition, or personal testimony and people's beliefs, even as a fad. And then pressure comes: 'It's being popular, it's being used, it should be studied.' It turns things upside down," said Dr. Edward Campion, a senior editor who reviews alternative medicine research submitted to the New England Journal of Medicine.
That reasoning was used to justify the $2 million weight-loss study, approved in 2007. It will test Tapas acupressure, devised by Tapas Fleming, a California acupuncturist. Use of her trademarked method requires employing people she certifies, and the study needs eight.
It involves pressing on specific points on the face and head -- the inner corners of the eyes are two -- while focusing on a problem. Dr. Charles Elder, a Kaiser Permanente physician who runs an herbal and ayurvedic medicine clinic in Portland, Ore., is testing whether it can prevent dieters from regaining lost weight.
Say a person comes home and is tempted by Twinkies on the table. The solution: Start acupressure "and say something like 'I have an uncontrollable Twinkie urge,"' Elder said. Then focus on an opposite thought, like "I'm in control of my eating."
In Chinese medicine, the pressure is said to release natural energy in a place in the body "responsible for transforming animal desire into higher thoughts," Elder said.
In a federally funded pilot study, 30 dieters who were taught acupressure regained only half a pound six months later, compared with over three pounds for a comparison group of 30 others. However, the study widely missed a key scientific standard for showing that results were not a statistical fluke.
The pilot trial was just to see if the technique was feasible, Elder said. The results were good enough for the federal center to grant $2.1 million for a bigger study in 500 people that is under way now.
Alternative medicine research also is complicated by the subjective nature of many of the things being studied. Pain, memory, cravings, anxiety and fatigue are symptoms that people tolerate and experience in widely different ways.
Take a question like, "Does yoga work for back pain?" said Margaret Chesney, a psychologist who is associate director of the federally funded Center for Integrative Medicine at the University of Maryland.
"What kind of yoga? What kind of back pain?" And what does it mean to "work" -- to help someone avoid surgery, hold a job or need less medication?
Some things -- the body meridians that acupuncturists say they follow, or energy forces that healers say they manipulate -- cannot be measured, and many scientists question their existence.
Studying herbals is tough because they are not standardized as prescription drugs are required to be. One brand might contain a plant's flowers, another its seeds and another, stems and leaves, in varying amounts.
There are 150 makers of black cohosh "and probably no two are exactly the same, and probably some people are putting sawdust in capsules and selling it," said Norman Farnsworth, a federally funded herbal medicine researcher at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
Even after a careful study, "you know one thing more precise and firm about what that agent did in that population with that outcome measurement, but you don't necessarily know the whole gamut of its effectiveness," as the echinacea study showed, Briggs said.
The center posts information on supplements and treatments on its Web site, and has a phone line for the public to ask questions -- even when the answer is that not enough is known to rule in or rule out benefit or harm.
"I hope we are building knowledge and at least an informed consumer," Briggs said. � 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
posted
Not sure why you are trying to edit something written by the Associated Press?
Posts: 18 | From MA | Registered: Jun 2009
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luvs2ride
Frequent Contributor (1K+ posts)
Member # 8090
posted
Well, I have just spent 20 mins typing my story and it all got wiped out. I'm not doing that again.
Here is the point of my story. CAM medicine is not meant to be applied like prescription medicine. CAM is to rebuild the body and the immune system. Not to go in and cure any one aspect of illness.
Western medicine thinks too compartmentalized and can't quite grasp the power of whole body approach to healing.
I work only with CAM doctors and they use a combination of abx and alternative therapies. I have had enormous success that is well documented in such a way that I never have a problem with doctors doubting me. Insurance company pays without question all the labwork and conventional medicine. CAM therapies are on me.
I have come from disabled, housebound and totally disfunctional to 100% functional and leading a very active life. I ride horses. I have rheumatoid arthritis but I have no symptoms!
I gave details and test results before but I simply can't reconstruct it again. Stupid computer.
-------------------- When the Power of Love overcomes the Love of Power, there will be Peace. Posts: 3038 | From america | Registered: Oct 2005
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Marnie
Frequent Contributor (5K+ posts)
Member # 773
posted
Have you ever seen the movie, "Supersize Me"?
Nutrition /nutrients /foods (which contain water, vitamins, minerals, amino acids) DO indeed impact our health...negatively OR positively.
It is all about balance because
a body that is in balance has no disease.
Infections and drugs and toxins and too many of the wrong/unhealthy foods, etc. throw off the balance.
Many of our foods no longer contain as many nutrients as they once did partly due to the overuse of pesticides. In addition, we process foods to such a degree that we also reduce the nutrient levels. We try to add the nutrients back in.
If you BELIEVE WHAT YOU POSTED and are a woman, would you NOT take prenatal vitamins if you got pregnant?
If you believe they don't do any good, why take them?
The above should give you a clue that TIMING is critical.
If you take probiotics WITHOUT consuming a full glass of water to dilute the stomach acids (which are so strong they will destroy the "good guys"), you are wasting your money.
Nutrients to help us fight cancer (from legit websites):
We ALREADY use sound waves to heal (and we used them in the past to cure cancer). They shatter kidney stones.
We use light waves to restore a "youthful" look (restore collagen). I've linked a website that has PICTURES showing this works. We use lightwaves to clear acne too. Acne is caused by an INFECTION.
In history, we used sunlight, fresh air and good foods to fight TB. People were sent to sanitariums.
In history, the most powerful army in the world was once the Roman army and the soldiers were given very very healthy foods to eat and their hospitals were INCREDIBLE.
After WE load up our soldiers with many vaccines, work them hard in boot camp to "build them up", what do WE feed them? And worse...what is the condition of the hospitals that we send them to when they have been wounded?
quote:studies that are based on precepts and ideas that are contrary to what is known in terms of human physiology and disease
This is the mindset that made Ignaz Semmelweis die a broken man.
quote:good study design can guard against bias
This is really the key point in my mind - well designed and replicable studies can verify results. It does not matter if the mechanism of action is known, or even misunderstood.
That being said, I am in favor of oversight of study design to justify costs. This sounds like more of a policy problem in the agency really. I would like to think that studies that can have extensive controls applied would have better funding, regardless of how "out there" the mainstream opinion is of the treatment.
It is going to be expensive, though - I would expect thousands of failures, but if it finds another artemisinin it could all be worth it.
Posts: 263 | From Capital Region, NY, USA | Registered: Jun 2008
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Marnie
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posted
Many foods are very very good for us...like garlic which contains over 27 nutrients.
Keying in on just one of those maybe the wrong approach because...
It maybe how ALL of the nutrients are working TOGETHER that provides the actual benefits of garlic.
Posts: 9424 | From Sunshine State | Registered: Mar 2001
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luvs2ride
Frequent Contributor (1K+ posts)
Member # 8090
posted
Glutathione has been extremely effective and important and literally gave me back my life. Glutathione keeps inflammation from accumulating in my body. A gene test reveals I have a very poor ability to produce my own glutathione so I will receive it artificially the remainder of my life.
Yet if a study was done to determine if glutathione cures rheumatoid arthritis or lyme disease, it would fail the test.
I can't help but feel there is an "agenda" behind the NIH studies.
-------------------- When the Power of Love overcomes the Love of Power, there will be Peace. Posts: 3038 | From america | Registered: Oct 2005
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luvs2ride
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One last question.......
How much has been spent on cancer research? We still don't have a cure.
-------------------- When the Power of Love overcomes the Love of Power, there will be Peace. Posts: 3038 | From america | Registered: Oct 2005
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Marnie
Frequent Contributor (5K+ posts)
Member # 773
posted
If you believe the history of Dr. Royal Rife (a Northwestern graduate who lived in San Francisco)...we HAD a cure for cancer many years ago, but it was repressed.
Lots of money and lots of jobs at stake!
Are we supposed to know nutrients can cure diseases...the "right" ones in the right dosages i.e. AMOUNTS?
Aren't some DISEASES/ disease states caused by nutrient deficiencies?
Example:
"Pellagra is a vitamin deficiency DISEASE caused by lack of niacin (vitamin B3)."
Are we supposed to know soundwaves and/or lightwaves can also work?
By law, the pharm. countries (misspelling intentional) cannot market nutrients...they try...they get "close"...
Look at what Nexium IS...for example. It is:
Esomeprazole magnesium.
Look at HOW Esomeprazole works...it
REDUCES stomach acid production.
Why not take OTC Zantac (rantinidine)? It also reduces stomach acid secretions...and then Mg or.. A lot cheaper...and no Rx is needed.
When I have a bout of heartburn, I take a Zantac and 1/2 hour later, I chew 2 Pepto Bismol tablets and drink a full glass of water.
It works. OTC and cheap.
Isn't it curious that in order to eliminate H. Pylori, FIRST we have to reduce stomach acids via Esomeprazole and then give something to eliminate the infection (an abx).
Sorta reminds me of:
1. Reducing inflammation 2. Hit the pathogen
Posts: 9424 | From Sunshine State | Registered: Mar 2001
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posted
The former head of this institute was sent there specifically to discredit all alternative approaches. This meant they picked the most unlikely studies, and then designed the study to fail.
They need to use this institute more effectively.
I am not a fan of alt med usually, but have benefitted from milk thistle, glucosamine, and other things that they have discredited.
Look at the track record of other research at the NIH and you will not find a whole lot of success. Where are the cures for cancer, heart disease, CFS, fibromyalgia, ALS, Parkinsons, etc. Maybe we should abolish the whole NIH since their track record aint so great. Not getting our money's worth?
Posts: 8430 | From Not available | Registered: Oct 2000
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bettyg
Unregistered
posted
interesting comments by all....
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Cass A
Frequent Contributor (1K+ posts)
Member # 11134
posted
Dear Friends,
When you look at the biased "reports" on the research relating to psychotropic drugs, for example, it becomes completely clear that the only way an individual can truly assess ANY study results is to read the original documents.
And, know WHO funded the study and what $$$$ ties the researchers had that would influence them, either positively or negatively.
If done by a "non-profit," it is important to find out if that group is actually a front organization for some well-funded industry or corporation. For example, the National Association for the Mentally Ill actually gets about 50% of its funding from the pharmaceutical industry and has key executives "on loan" from a major pharmaceutical firm.
Best,
Cass A
Posts: 1245 | From Thousand Oaks, CA | Registered: Feb 2007
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