I will practice medicine; it changed the way I will live."
—a fourth-year University of Virginia medical student
referring to DeLevitt's alternative medicine course,
Healing Options, offered at the medical school
The National Institutes of Health Joins the Act
What some have called unorthodox therapies are gaining even more credibility, or at least a second look, even from the harshest critics. The creation of the National Institutes of Health's (NIH) Office of Alternative Medicine (OAM) has spurred this growth. In 1996 the OAM, under the direction of Wayne Jonas, M.D., a family physician with a background in many alternative therapies including homeopathy, bioenergy, and spiritual healing, awarded nearly $9.7 million in grants to ten institutions to conduct research on the therapeutic merits of Chinese herbs, acupuncture, massage, and other alternatives to conventional Western medical treatment. In a hearing before the Senate Labor and Human Resources Committee regarding the Access to Medical Treatment Act, Jonas testified that the OAM is committed to accelerating public access to potentially useful complementary and alternative therapies.
The OAM's leader reports that his office is exploring methods to assess and monitor the results of individual practices of complementary and alternative health practitioners, including practice-based research networks. Jonas has recommended a three-tiered review process specifically tailored to judge the level of risk of particular treatments. He states, "If such developments were accompanied by systematic data collection of selected unapproved therapies, a situation allowing access, assuring public safety, and furthering research could be accomplished."15
The following is a list of NIH Office of Alternative Medicine initial grant awards. Although research in these directions is improving, it is clear how comparatively little is spent on research in alternative therapies.
Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center $29,901
Massage Therapy for Bone Marrow Transplant
University of Arizona $29,585
Acupuncture, Unipolar Depression
University of Maryland Pain Center $30,000
Acupuncture, Osteoarthritis
Medical College of Ohio $26,405
Massage Therapy, HIV-1
City of Hope National Medical Center $30,000
Electrochemical DC Current, Cancer
American Health Foundation $30,000
Pancreatic Enzyme Therapy, Cancer
Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University $30,000
Hypnosis, Low Back Pain
University of Virginia School of Medicine $28,919
Massage Therapy, Post-Surgical Outcomes
Pacific College of Oriental Medicine $30,000
Chinese Herbal Medicine, PMS
Washington University $30,000
Anti-Hepatitis Plants, Therapeutic Evaluation
Pennsylvania State University $30,000
Music Therapy, Psychosocial Adjustment after Brain Injury
Menninger Clinic $30,000
Energetic Therapy Basal Cell Carcinoma
University of Miami School of Medicine $30,000
Massage Therapy, HIV-Exposed Infants
Harvard Medical School $30,000
Hypnosis, Accelerated Bone Fracture Healing
University of California $30,000
Classical Homeopathy, Health Status
Hahnemann University, $18,420
Dance/Movement Therapy, Cystic Fibrosis
Emory University $30,000
Chinese Herbal Therapy, Common Warts
George Washington University $29,985
Imagery and Relaxation, Immunity Control
Northwestern University $29,985
T'ai-Chi, Mild Balance Disorders
Lenox Hill Hospital $30,000
Guided Imagery, Asthma
University of Texas Health Science Center $30,000
Imagery and Relaxation, Breast Cancer
University of Vermont $30,000
Manual Palpation, Lumbar Spine
Columbia University $30,000
Chinese Herbs, Hot Flashes
University of Minnesota $29,964
Macrobiotic Diet, Cancer
Alternative Treatments Gaining Popularity among Doctors and Consumers
Alternative therapy is fast becoming a $15 billion industry in this country. And many of the nearly 670,000 Western conventional, or allopathic, medical doctors in this nation have demonstrated an increasing openness to the possibility that alternative therapies may have merit. The first original published research, led by David Blum-berg, M.D., of the department of psychiatry at the State University of New York Health Science Center at Syracuse, reported that over 90 percent of the doctors responding to survey questions said that they were willing to refer their patients for an alternative form of treatment. These findings were based on 572 responses to 2,000 questionnaires that were mailed to conventionally trained and board-certified internists and family physicians.
In late 1995, the results of a study published in the Archives of Internal Medicine stated that "on average physicians perceive complementary medicine as moderately effective, with younger physicians more receptive than their older counterparts." Nonetheless, the study concluded by saying that these alternative therapies " urgently need to be tested in randomized controlled trials." Proponents of alternative therapies say that such testing won't work because of the unquantifiable components of many alternative therapies, including spirituality, energy, human interaction, and placebo effects. And in symposia and medical conferences around the nation during 1996, that point continued to be debated among the nation's top healers.
"It's an enormous problem. They are stalled around the methodological issue, how do you research this? And right now the methodological issues are virtually insurmountable. I think they're missing the point. They are always looking for the control group. Researching common sense gets very expensive."
—Robert Duggan, president of the Traditional
Acupuncture Institute, Columbia, Maryland, and
