Defund the NCCAM

The NCCAM, or National Center for Complimentary and Alternative Medicine, has been open for over 15 years in a couple different incarnations. This is a government funded institution researching such things as qi, homeopathy, acupuncture, etc, etc, etc. It attempts to demonstrate the validity of alternative medicine techniques through the scientific process.

Unfortunately, they aren't doing very well. After hundreds of millions of dollars, they have yet to demonstrate the legitimacy or reliability of a single "alternative or complimentary" method.

Enter: Barack Obama

You may know that Obama's website allows users to sign up, write a brief message about an issue they feel is important, and other users can sign off on that issue showing their support. It's very much a voting system. Over here you can see that some intrepid soul has suggested saving the government a decent chunk of change by defunding the NCCAM. This should save a minimum of $225 million. I suggest you follow the link, register, and vote that issue up.

I leave you with this lovely (albeit long for a forum, thus the sections cut out with spoilers) poem:


Storm

Tim Minchin

By definition, (I begin)
Alternative medicine, (I continue)
Is either not been proved to work,
Or been proved, not to work.
Do you know what they call
'Alternative Medicine'
That's been proved to work?

-- Medicine

You're so sure of your position,
But you're just close-minded,
I think you'll find that
Your FAITH in science and tests,
Is just as blind as the
faith of any fundamentalists,

Wow, that's a good point,
Let me think for a bit.
Oh wait, my mistake,
That's absolute bullshit.
Science adjusts its views
Based on what's observed.
Faith is the denial of observation,
so that belief can be preserved.

If you show me that, say,
Homeopathy works,
I will change my mind,
I will spin on a fucking dime.
I'll be as embarassed as hell,
Yet I will run through the streets yelling,
It's a MIRACLE!
Take physics and bin it!
Water has memory!
And whilst its memory
Of a long lost drop of onion juice is infinite,
It somehow forgets all the poo it's had in it.

You show me that it works,
And how it works,
and when I've recovered,
from the shock,
I will take a compass and carve
'Fancy That',
On the side of my cock.

Homeopathy is hilarious.

I think you're off-base here.

First of all, given the immense popularity of supplements and other alternative therapies, isn't it just as important for NCCAM-funded research to show that a given therapy doesn't work as to show that it does? The only way to do that is to study it.

This grant listing looks like a description of perfectly solid research. Although advocates of traditional Chinese medicine might say that a given herbal preparation works because it affects qi, that explanation has no bearing on whether or not the preparation actually does have effects that we might describe in biochemical and physiological terms. The same goes for acupuncture and other techniques. (I agree that homeopathy has been fairly well discredited, so I'm a bit surprised that NCCAM does appear to be funding some research on it.)

Also, NCCAM money funds basic research as well as clinical trials. Only the latter can show if something truly "works," but the former show how it might work.

Prozac and its cousins are rationally designed drugs based on what (little) we know about the neurochemistry of depression, but they only work for a surprisingly small number of patients. It's likely that that some remedies that people have happened upon over time through means other than the scientific method actually do work, for reasons that their users aren't aware of.

I see NCCAM as a pro-science effort, not an anti-science effort. Incidentally, they have received about $120 million per fiscal year in recent years.

Okay, quick solution for that:
Give let's say $50 million to the JREF.

But looking practically at your answer, I had considered that angle. That's not what the NCCAM has been up to. This article covers it pretty thoroughly, but here's a snip, bolds mine:

bean, I believe they're referring to the NCCAM's increasing budget over time.


source

Not true. Here's just one example, for echinacea, which I've used myself--I won't anymore. There are many other examples easily found on their site. No, they don't use the word "useless," but that ain't scientific language.

Note that the echinacea study was published in Annals of Internal Medicine, which isn't published by Rodale Press the last time I looked. Clearly someone finds this information useful.

I am so glad I read that poem, SO FRAKING TRUE.

However I would just like to state that if magic existed it would be AWESOME!


Hussein said:
First of all, given the immense popularity of supplements and other alternative therapies, isn't it just as important for NCCAM-funded research to show that a given therapy doesn't work as to show that it does? The only way to do that is to study i[/QUOTE

The rational person would say yes. However. you must realize, that any evidence working against CAM is actually evidence FOR the big pharma conspiracy.

Arnica is a fairly popular pain reliever.
$250 Million over 12 years? C'mon, I'm willing to be that fueling government vehicles costs that annually. Imagine the savings if the government purchased Chevy Aveos instead of Impalas/Malibus for their fleet vehicles - $10k price difference, 3-4mpg difference.

Funding research into possible money saving or avoiding serious health risks > bigger cars for employee perks.

Not sure what you mean by that example. It says "we don't know if it treats colds or flus - maybe!"

It does say that it doesn't prevent them, so taking it all the time is out, but that report overall is pretty wishy-washy. And note that they specify the need for more tests, which means more money.

Here's another bit from the site:

But that's not really true. For one thing, there's a study showing that placebo acupuncture is actually better at leading to an IVF pregnancy than "legitimate" acupuncture. That itself isn't really true, the two only varied significantly in the urine-test pregnancy rates, not the rate of live births or clinical pregnancy.

But even if I grant the very dubious claim that the NCCAM is some sort of debunking institution, there's another problem - we have a limited amount of money to invest in medical research. There's no false dichotomy here - maintaining the NCCAM comes at the cost of legitimate medical research.

Sorry to deluge you with articles and links, but this is a particularly good one overviewing the practicality of maintaining the NCCAM.

bean, I'm thinking you're right about that number now. It looks like it should be minimum $125 million, not $225 million.

Um. That looks like actual medicine, as opposed to "Complimentary or Alternative" medicine. Willow bark is a pretty popular pain reliever as well, as mentioned in the above poem. The NCCAM doesn't have anything about Arnica that I could find.

Your point about the money is answered in the above post.

source

That definitely sounds like some useless hippy bullshit right there.

I think the point of your post was that you don't like alternative medicine and don't want to see it funded. Fortunately for the general public, you are not in a position to decide what is and isn't valid scientific research.

Medicines are controlled/overseen by the FDA. Arnica is not a medicine.

This statement reveals you presupposition that alternative therapies are illegitimate until proven otherwise. It makes me wonder what you think of as legitimate medical research (I'm asking that sincerely, not snarkily).

I think we're also running into problems by use of the broad term "alternative therapy." This term encompasses a lot of different practices that have varying degrees of efficacy for different ailments and conditions. I don't think it's possible to say we should or should not fund research on alternative therapy - it's just too broad of a statement to make either way.

However, the largest reason that I support research in this area is because the practices are popular, even if they sometimes they shouldn't be (a great example is chiropractic care - though many people report relief from back pain from these practices, many also don't know the kind of serious complications that can arise from spinal manipulation). Rigorous scientific research can dispel positive and negative myths.

Really? When I click the link it says:

Not a very fair paraphrase on your part. I read it as "The science shows that echinacea is probably not effective in treating colds or flu, or in preventing colds or other infections. We're continuing to investigate whether it can treat upper-respiratory infections, and its possible immune-system effects." Seems pretty damning if you're taking it for colds.

As for the money, it's about $120 million per fiscal year, so it's definitely not chump change.

Oh, I forgot to post this before - Accuser, your poem posting privileges have been revoked.

That's a news story on a meta-analysis, not an account of original clinical research, and it's not at all clear that any of the research, or the meta-analysis itself, received NCCAM funding.

Wait, I wasn't claiming that it's a "debunking institution," I was claiming that it's a scientific institution--sometimes they debunk, sometimes they confirm. But you're certainly right about the size of the money pie. It seems more like a money Twinkie right now.

Thanks, I'll check all of those out.