Where’s our money?
Having completed a study on the supplements used by breast cancer patients courtesy of funding from the US Department of Defence, nursing professor Gwen Wyatt can get back to her day job and her other research interest – that’ll be her study on the effects of reflexology on symptom management and quality of life for women with breast cancer.
That study is funded by the US National Institutes of Health (NIH). They are funding it to the tune of.. wait for it… $3.1 million.
This is not an isolated case. In fact CAM researchers in the US are now benefiting from the president’s economic stimulus package.
Although cancer survival rates reportedly have improved, several types of cancers are forecasted to increase worldwide. Recognizing the opportunity to curtail the impacts of this disease on vast numbers of patients, Congress granted the National Institutes of Health (NIH) $10.4 billion – that’s around seven billion pounds - over two years for research and infrastructure through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) of 2009. The NIH actually has something called the Office of Cancer Complementary and Alternative Medicine (OCCAM). That Office has grabbed a portion of these stimulus funds to study three natural supplements for their chemopreventive and chemotherapeutic effects on pancreatic and other cancers. These are B-DIM – the “broccoli supplement”, the green tea polyphenol epigallocatechin-3-gallate (EGCG) and a Chinese herbal mixture.
On top of that, the US National Cancer Institute (NCI) has even bowed to public pressure and is now, for the first time, making grants for researchers interested in starting small pilot and feasibility studies of CAM therapies and practices. “These studies can generate data needed for conducting larger scientific studies of CAM in the future”, says the NCI. Anyone feel a wind of change sweeping through?
Well no, you wouldn’t, as we’re in practice in good old Blighty.
I think it’s fair – hey, even evidence-based – to say that here, when it comes to CAM, the powers that be are more interested in regulation than research.
Save the ‘people’s medicine’ : sign herbal medicine petition
An anonymous herbal medicine practitioner has launched a petition in support of herbal medicine which is up for signing at the online website GoPetition.
The petition highlights UK Government moves to statutorily regulate medical herbalists and changes to the regulation of herbal medicines, both of which, says the petition, will “reduce access, increase costs, decrease patient choice, encourage a black market and send experienced herbalists underground, crucify our indigenous tradition and diversity of available healthcare”.
Phew! I can’t help but agree. Beneficiaries of the changes are unlikely to be the general public, but the pharmaceutical industry.
* Read the full premble and then electronically sign the petition here.
