I have just found out that the European Framework-7 programme (Theme I - Health) includes (along with many laudable and innovative calls for medical research) proposals for CAM investigations. It requests a "Road Map for future research in this area". The FP-7 research programme offers billions of Euro for medical research to small companies and academia. I have mixed feeling about inclusion of CAM. One part of me says that proponents are always asking for more research, and here it is. The other half tells me that this is likely to be a waste of good research money.
I will not drop names but a member of NICE (National Institute for Clinical Excellence) once said to me that "there are things that we know work and things that we know do not. For example, you might jump out of a plane wearing a parachute but you would not jump out holding on to just a handkerchief".
Perhaps someone should tell them to check out the existing evidence base for CAM before they take their proposals any further:Originally Posted by Bunny
[R. Barker] Bausell’s book [Snake Oil: The Truth About Complementary and Alternative Medicine] gives an excellent account of how to test treatments properly, and of all the ways you can be fooled into thinking something works when it doesn’t. Bausell concludes “There is no compelling, credible scientific evidence to suggest that any CAM therapy benefits any medical condition or reduces any medical symptom (pain or otherwise) better than a placebo”.
-snip-
It can now be said with some certainty that the number of alternative treatments that have been shown to work better than placebo is very small, and quite possibly zero…
http://dcscience.net/?p=231
The problem with CAM research is that the proposals are never competitive with medical research proposals. In the USA, that led some woo-friendly legislators to create the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM). Its mission is to promote quackery. One project spent millions of dollars to see if brain tumors can be treated by someone praying/meditating over a photo of the patient 15 minutes per day!!
In another case, a proposal for treating pancreatic cancer was so bad that it was rejected. Then, a Congressman called the NCCAM director to his office, and the project was funded. We don't know what happened in that meeting, in the past the NCCAM funding (currently $120/year) was held hostage till they met the demands of Congress. Here is a link to a series of articles on the topic http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/?p=104 You can search the site for clinical trials (see the "Categories" on the top-right of the page).
Most of the "research" funded by NCCAM over more than ten years concludes- "We don't see good results, more research is needed." A couple negative results were reported for herbs; but that led to herbalists rationalizing that there was something wrong with the herb. They say "you gave it as a pill? It should be a liquid." Then, they test the liquid and hear "Where did you get the liquid? Everyone knows that's the wrong souce ..."
I guess we should not be too surprised as what we are talking about here is more politics that science. If politics was based on the rational, wouldn't the world be a better place?
Like religion, CAM will never go away. But it is difficult to maintain credibility as a sceptic, if one does not encourage research. The issue is not therefore whether one should research alternative medicine, but rather that studies should be constructed with the ability to show non-inferiority of the placebo arm rather than superiority of the alternative arm.
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