*kudos to Steve Salzberg who is featured prominently in the video.
001. the embed link:
.
some favorite lines:
"[Salzberg states] Harkin has a really fundamental misunderstanding about how science works. Good science doesn't set out to prove that something you've already decided upon works. If you already know that it works, you don't need to investigate it [...] when the science says something doesn't work, we stop funding it, we stop investigating it. But here, because we have a dedicated stream of money going to this national center, we don't stop";
"$2.5 billion spent, no alternative cures found [...] one by one, the NIH's long-term clinical trials began to knock down the claims of alternative medicine [...such as] 'prayer from a distance [...] TCM [...] acupuncture [...] aromatherapy [...] echinacea [...] magnets [...] reiki [...and specifically stating] the concepts of chiropractic are not base don solid science [...and] there is little evidence to support homeopathy as an effective treatment for any specific condition' [...]";
"[we're show] normal patterns of qi in the body [and synonyms for life force]";
"how the National Institutes of Health took an assortment of mystical therapies from the fraudulent fringes of the marketplace, and planted them right in the heart of the American medical establishment";
"lured by the promise and prestige of NIH grants, dozens of the most famous hospitals and medical schools across the United States now have well-funded centers for alternative medicine [...and Steve Salzberg says] they're training people in methods that they don't have
any evidence to support [...e.g.] energy healing practices like reiki
and healing touch [...] we've never had any kind of evidence [...that
there an] energy field [...] it's frankly ridiculous";
"Moyer's
sympathetic examination of supernatural medicine set the tone for
today's television healers whose miraculous claims and occasional state
support are rarely questioned by the news media";
"[and it mentions 1984's] Quackery: A $10 Billion Scandal [...] a comprehensive report on fraudulent medicine in America. Their conclusion was a scandal [...] con artists swindled the public out of $10 billion as year [...with] untested herbs and mystical energy therapies [...] 'alternative therapy' is often a euphemism for quackery [...Harkin] created the Office of Alternative Medicine [...] the Office of Alternative Medicine's advisory council had a very different set of priorities [...that included] Deepak Chopra [...and] Eisenberg [...] Moss [...] Hildenbrand [...] Bidell [who...] didn't believe in the scientific method [...] OAM published 1995's] 'Alternative Medicine, Expanding Medical Horizons: A Report to the National Institutes of Health on Alternative Medical Systems and Practices in the United States' [...was] a landmark report, marking the first time the government had ever taken a favorable look at medical practices that had been relegated to the fringes of American society [...] a total reversal of the 1980s report on quackery [...including] energy medicine, homeopathy, and magnet therapy were no longer seen as the domain of con artists [...] the media jumped on the alternative bandwagon [...] the alternative medicine celebrity was born [...]";
"[regarding Steve Jobs's delay in treating his cancer with alternative methods, Steve Kroft asks] how could such a smart man do such a stupid thing?";
"Dr Josephine Briggs, the director of the recently renamed National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health at the NIH [...she says] 'the evidence for the safety and efficacy of complementary approaches is still very incomplete' [...and after Jobs's death] responded to Steve Jobs's passing with the first official admission of the failures of alternative medicine. She wrote: 'when making treatment decisions, unproven 'alternative medicine' approaches should not replace conventional medical care approaches know to be useful or helpful [...] simply put, the evidence is not there';
