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
December 11, 2011|By Trine Tsouderos,
Chicago Tribune
reporter
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.
The National Center for Complementary and Alternative
Medicine also helped pay scientists to study whether squirting brewed coffee
into someone's intestines can help treat pancreatic cancer (a $406,000 grant)
and whether massage
makes people with advanced cancer feel better ($1.25 million). The coffee
enemas did not help. The massage did.
NCCAM also has invested in studies of various forms of energy healing,
including one based on the ideas of a self-described "healer, clairvoyant
and medicine woman" who says her children inspired her to learn to read
auras. The cost for that was $104,000.
A small, little-known branch of the National Institutes of Health, NCCAM
was launched a dozen years ago to study alternative treatments used by the
public but not accepted by mainstream medicine. Since its birth, the center has
spent $1.4 billion, most of it on research.
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. ttsouderos@tribune.com Twitter @chicagoscience
Continued at ….. http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2011-12-11/health/ct-met-nccam-overview-20111211_1_cancer-treatment-alternative-medicine-breast-cancer-researcher