Robert Todd Carroll
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frontier medicine
Frontier medicine refers to complementary and alternative medical practices "for which there is no plausible biomedical explanation." That is how the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM) described it in a grant program initiated in June of 2000. The NCCAM is a division of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Because "there is a relative paucity of data that convincingly demonstrates" anything positive about CAM practices,* the NIH decided that the reason must be that scientists need more money to do the research that will provide the needed plausibility. Proving the benefits of such things as therapeutic touch or homeopathy would have the positive effect of making millions of people who spend billions of dollars on CAM look wise. The fact is that the NIH has invested more than $200 million dollars over the past dozen years and has yet to come up with any evidence of a plausibly effective alternative therapy.* One of the first scientists to take the offer of grant money from the NCCAM was Gary Schwartz who, in partnership with the University of Arizona, set up the Center for Frontier Medicine in Biofield Science (CFMBS). They got $1.8 million from the NIH for their efforts. Schwartz is a kind of alchemist who has a knack for making junk science appear to be sound science to those who don't investigate his work too closely. Those who investigate his work carefully have exposed the dross beneath the glitter. According to their grant proposal, the CFMBS
Apparently, that's clear enough for this type of government sponsored work. The NIH specified in its call for proposals in frontier medicine that such studies involve the following:
Of these areas, only electromagnetic therapy has shown any potential for plausible effective treatment of human disorders of any kind. Energy healing, homeopathy, and distance healing by prayer or other magic have already been shown to be untestable or ineffective or explicable in terms of such things as the placebo effect or stress reduction. Frontier medicine, for the most part, studies alleged energies, fields, forces, or powers that can't be detected by modern science or technology. In other words, frontier medicine is not about medicine on the frontier but about medicine at the edges of the hinterlands where magical thinking is dominant. One example of frontier medicine sponsored by the NIH is a grant given to Karen Prestwood, M.D., of the University of Connecticut Center on Aging to study the effects of therapeutic touch on bone metabolism in postmenopausal women with wrist fractures. Dr. Prestwood's grant was also to investigate the effect of healing touch on immune function in advanced cervical cancer.* Another example of frontier medicine is Beverly Rubiks's study of the effect of therapeutic touch on the growth and movement of bacterial cells in a laboratory culture. Other examples are Gary Schwartz's investigation of the effects of Johrei (an alleged "divine energy") and yoga on brain and heart mechanisms and Allan Hamilton's study of the effects of Johrei on recovery from hernia and coronary artery bypass surgery. Another example is the distant healing study of Elisabeth Targ et al. As Dr. Wallace Sampson has noted: the NCCAM "is the only entity in the NIH devoted to an ideological approach to health."* Frontier medicine is indeed on the frontier, but it is on the frontier that most of the rest of medicine left behind when it turned away from magic and superstition centuries ago. The NCCAM was originally called the Office of Alternative Medicine (OAM) and its birth mother in 1991 was Iowa Sen. Tom Harkin, still a main figure on the appropriations subcommittee in charge of the NIH. Harkin got the bug for alternative therapies when he came to believe that his hay fever had been cured by bee pollen. He and a few Senate buddies wanted to fund research that would prove the effectiveness of bee pollen and other quackery. There is no evidence in the scientific literature that bee pollen cures allergies or has any beneficial effect. Worse, bee pollen can cause life-threatening allergic reactions in some people. Nevertheless, Harkin and the promoters of CAM practices wanted the NIH to do the science to prove the benefits of specific CAM treatments. When the OAM couldn't come up with any good science for any CAM during its first 18 months of operation, Harkin attacked the OAM's director Dr. Joseph Jacobs in a public hearing in June 1993 and then "handpicked four alternative-medicine advocates" and had them appointed to the OAM's advisory board (Satel and Taranto: 1996). If real science wasn't going to get results, maybe pseudoscience would. Jacobs called the alt med advocates "Harkinites" and they soon attacked Jacobs for trying to set up proper scientific research centers. Such fact-based research would be "hostile" to CAM, they said. The Harkinites won out. The OAM set up research centers at the University of Minnesota's Center for Addiction and Alternative Medicine Research and at Bastyr University, a naturopathic college outside of Seattle. The Harkinites were so resistant to sound science that Jacobs resigned in September 1994. "It's pathetic," he said. "They were so naive about science. I wouldn't trust anything coming out of the OAM as long as the Harkinites are micromanaging it" (Satel and Taranto: 1996). A few years later it was announced that Congress had approved $50,000,000 to establish a new National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine at Bastyr University.* And, in 1993 the maker of the bee pollen capsules that "cured" Harkin—Royden Brown of the CC Pollen Co.—paid the Federal Trade Commission $200,000 in a consent decree "for making false claims about his product's curative powers" (Satel and Taranto: 1996). See also alternative medicine, complementary medicine, energy, hidden persuaders, integrative medicine, and holistic medicine. further reading Satel, Sally M.D. and James Taranto. (1996). "The battle over alternative therapies," Sacramento Bee, January 3. First published in The New Republic. |
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©copyright 2006 Robert Todd Carroll |
Last updated 12/03/07 | ||
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