The News Review:
- Sen. Harkin: National Center for Alternative Medicine disproves …
- Transforming Medicine: An Historic Event
- Hard to swallow
- THE RLLING REVIEWER: A PRICK F CNSCIUSNESS
- Alternative medicine increasingly popular among Americans
- Without research Nigeria’s alternative medicine can’t develop …
Sen. Harkin: National Center for Alternative Medicine disproves …
Majikthise
Tom Harkin the proud father of the National Center for Complimentary and Alternative Medicine told a Senate hearing on Thursday that NCCAM had disappointed him by disproving too many alternative therapies. "ne of the purposes of.
Related from Restorehousatonic: Former recreation official asked to wait to volunteer
Transforming Medicine: An Historic Event
Huffington Post
The current system is highly flawed on the one hand in terms of what it does do and on the other hand the things that it does not do–taking into account the needs of the patient when they are facing a severe life-threatening disease. I give a lot of credit to the current President Harvey Fineberg who is committed to science and evidence-based approaches to care but also is open with an appropriate degree of humility that we need to recognize that there may be a lot of approaches which work that we don’t understand. What is the difference between integrative medicine and complementary or alternative medicine? How would you respond to people like Arnold Relman the former editor-in-chief of the New England Journal of Medicine who said “There’s no such thing as alternative medicine; there’s medicine that works and medicine that doesn’t work. Yes but where I have difficulties in my own mind is the difference between something being scientifically proven and being intuitively obvious. For example the issue of caring and compassion–does that need to be scientifically proven? When an individual is dealing with a very difficult problem and if we’re thinking about their health approach during that problem–the importance of maintaining will motivation empowerment–and the encouragement one could get from support groups or from mindfulness meditation or from participating in yoga or from receiving acupuncture if the belief is that acupuncture may be helping with the particular problem–is that CAM or is that conventional or is it common sense? Is it necessary to prove everything if the therapy itself causes no harm but allows the individual to feel empowered and motivated? Integrative medicine uses the entire armamentarium both traditional and nontraditional to give an individual a full array of what they need to maintain and improve their health. If an individual has a chronic disease such as cancer integrative medicine may include everything that works and alleviates suffering. It recognizes that in addition to chemotherapy the tumor is growing within a human being that is facing new fears anxieties and complexities in their life.
Hard to swallow
Financial Times
Rationalism in other words was undermined from within the industry as well as from without. Shapiro a popular science writer reaches similar conclusions to those of academics Simon Singh and Edzard Ernst in their volume on the subject Trick or Treatment? They catalogue an extraordinary array of unproven but often highly profitable alternative remedies that exploit faith in the natural world and scepticism about doctors from colonic irrigation and ear candling to homeopathy and Bach flower remedies. Such practices are part of a global alternative medicine industry generating £40bn a year. A significant minority persists in seeking unproven ?natural? and ?traditional? remedies that may seem harmless. Yet as Singh and Ernst argue they also take lives: through the directly negative effects of ?treatments?; by interaction and intervention with drugs that would otherwise work; or by neglect of proven treatments which may prolong pain and reduce the likelihood of survival of cancer or Aids patients. Rather than bringing in tougher legislation that would impose scientific studies to back the claims for alternative healthcare western governments allow ?traditional? practices to continue. In 2005 the British government even provided nearly £1m via the Prince of Wales?s ?Foundation for Integrated Health? to create the Complementary and Natural Healthcare Council a self-regulatory body for alternative therapists.
THE RLLING REVIEWER: A PRICK F CNSCIUSNESS
East County Magazine
Since then it has become easier to accept these feelings without giving them my full attention. Each session introduces me to fresh realizations and intriguing glimpses into my own body. Michelle was kind enough to introduce me to her profession and personal mission by answering these questions: How were you introduced to "alternative" medicine? Acupuncture specifically? I found acupuncture at the age of 18 when I had my worst outbreak of psoriasis ? my body was completely covered? I’ve had psoriasis since I was five-years-old and I tried everything and spent many years with lesions all over my body. I saw the acupuncturist for three months of treatments and at the end of it I was lesion-free. What inspired you to open Healthy Community Acupuncture? Were there any unique challenges or opportunities you faced in the process of getting it off the ground? The Community Acupuncture Network (CAN) movement was the inspiration. I knew I didn’t want a typical clinic.
Alternative medicine increasingly popular among Americans
Personal Liberty Digest
Almost 40 percent of adults and over 10 percent of children sought alternative medicine help for a range of health problems – such as chronic back pain – in 2007 according to a joint survey by the National Institutes of Health and the U. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Dr Josephine Briggs director of the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine at the NIH says she was struck at these numbers adding that people also seek complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) therapy to treat neck pain musculoskeletal pain and headaches. Therapies most often used in CAM to threat pain include chiropractic care acupuncture as well as massage.
Without research Nigeria’s alternative medicine can’t develop …
The Punch
? Recently the Chairman of the National Association of Industrial Pharmacists Mr. Emmanuel Ekunno said that the group would work with relevant authorities to stop such claims. Unlike China and India alternative medicine in Nigeria is devoid of science. Artemisinin a new malarial drug was extracted from a traditional plant. For thousands of years Artemisia (a Chinese plant) was used by Chinese herbalists in the treatment of skin diseases and malaria. The Chinese government started a research into the plant in 1960 and in 1972 a Chinese researcher discovered artemisinin which is now used globally to treat malaria. Such collaboration does not exist between Nigerian scientists and alternative medicine practitioners.