NCCAM and AHCJ

I used to be a member of the Association of Health Care Journalists but didn't renew my membership because it was completely in the pocket of the pharmaceutical industry and the American Medical Association. There simply was no room in the organization's view for complementary and alternative medicine.

That anti-CAM perspective was demonstrated again today by the posting on Forbes.com by the Treasurer of the association supporting the article to abolish the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM) which is part of NIH. He claims it is a waste of taxpayer money to learn more about CAM.

Why would we want to learn why billions of people around the world have used CAM for thousands of years? Maybe it will help us understand why America spends more on health care than any other nation on earth and yet ranks #30 in longevity, worse in many other categories.

For those of us who owe our lives, or at least the quality of our life, to CAM, the war between the profit-minded medical industry and the world of natural alternatives continues. We don't mind those who only want the world of drugs and surgery to have what they want, why are they so afraid to let us have more natural alternatives?


NOTE: The following post "Correction" is added below at the request of the unnamed person in this blog.

Even though I did not mention him by name, the Treasurer for the Association of Health Care Journalists has requested a correction to my last blog. He simply retweeted the article on Forbes.com by Steven Salzberg about cutting off funding for NCCAM.

I will leave it to my readers to decide if retweeting such an article is an endorsement or simply intellectual curiousity about the current attitudes about health care in America or about our fiscal problems.

NCCAM 10th Anniversary Symposium

Today, Dec. 8th, the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine will hold its 10th anniversary symposium at Washington, D.C. Those unable to attend can catch the webcast of the activities at videocast.nih.gov

Did you know that over 11% of all out-of-pocket expenditures for health care were for complementary and alternative medicine? The field continues to grow in popularity today as more information becomes available.

NCCAM's 10th Anniversary

The National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM), 1 of 27 divisions of the National Institutes of Health, recently celebrated its 10th anniversary. NCCAM Director Josephine P. Briggs, M.D noted the organizations accomplishments saying "We have funded more than 2,200 research projects, resulting in more than 3,300 scientific articles published in peer-reviewed journals." More important Dr. Briggs added, "Based on the growing evidence base for CAM interventions, a number of medical professional organizations—such as the American College of Physicians, the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons, and the American Academy of Pediatrics—have included CAM modalities in recent guidelines."

Clearly these accomplishments are in stark contrast to the recent series of articles from the Associated Press which claimed that they have never found a single cure and that the millions of dollars spent on research could have been better spent on traditional research. This pro-prescription drug campaign should have been listed as editorial instead of news.