Tom Harkin
Tom Harkin's wants to waste money on healthcare
Tom Harkin, Democratic Senator from Iowa, and one of the leading supporters of quack medicine is at it again. As the US Senator who forced the junk science NCCAM onto the National Institutes of Health and has drained precious scientific research dollars, he is now putting his pseudoscientific ideas into health care reform. As a member of the Senate’s Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee (HELP), he is trying to be sneaky, because he has the power to do so. He has been instrumental in attaching some amendments to the Affordable Health Choices Act (the formal name for the bill in Congress to reform healthcare policy), including:
I have no issue with the first two, especially since the cost of medical education is so large that some deferment is appropriate. I might add that other health care students (pharmacy, nursing, and other technical specialties in medicine) should receive a similar consideration. Read More...
- A provision to allow medical students to defer loan repayment until they finish their residencies
- Limits on the types of expenses medical students cover with loan funds
- An provision to promote and fund research on pain management
- Inclusion of alternative medicine workers in the bill's definition of "healthcare workforce"
I have no issue with the first two, especially since the cost of medical education is so large that some deferment is appropriate. I might add that other health care students (pharmacy, nursing, and other technical specialties in medicine) should receive a similar consideration. Read More...
Alternative medicine–waste of money
As I’ve discussed before, Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM) are so-called treatments that lack any scientific or medical support. The National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM), which was funded by the US Congress to be a part of the National Institutes of Health, continues to discover that these treatments do not work. And it wasted $2.5 billion to discover that they don’t work. I would have done it for $1.5 billion. In fact, given that most of the CAM therapies rely upon ideas that have no foundation in physics, chemistry, biology, physiology or any other science, most of the studies shouldn’t have been done at all. Read More...
If it looks like a duck...then it must be Quack medicine
One of the largest wastelands of medical science is something that has evolved into being called Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM). What is CAM? There’s no clear definition, but the epicenter for this pseudo-medicine is the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM) which was funded by the US Congress to be a part of the National Institutes of Health. They define CAM as CAM is a group of diverse medical and health care systems, practices, and products that are not presently considered to be part of conventional medicine. The most common CAM therapies are homeopathy, chiropractic, acupuncture, naturopathy and herbalism. Typical of most pseudosciences, it does not rely upon the scientific method to generate results, it usually appeals to emotion, such as the great Big Pharma conspiracy against these potentially life-saving therapies.
I think that individuals should choose the therapy that they want, especially if it does no harm. If I had a chronic and terminal disease, I might choose an alternative therapy. If someone chooses to consume vast amounts of vitamin C to prevent cancer, despite little or no evidence that it works, that is their choice. What is troubling is when CAM is offered as an appropriate replacement to evidence based medicine, that is, “the conscientious, explicit and judicious use of current best evidence in making decisions about the care of individual patients.” Best evidence relies upon scientific and clinical research, publication in peer-reviewed (and respected) journals, and sometimes, the opinions of respected authorities in the field.
The National Institutes of Health is a US government agency responsible for biomedical and health related research. One of the “centers” of NIH is NCCAM, which was established in 1991 by order of Congress. In fact, Senator Tom Harkin (D, Iowa) pushed for the formation of the center because he had been cured of allergies by taking bee pollen supplements, despite the fact that there is no scientific evidence that bee pollen would do so. In fact, there’s more evidence that bee pollen will cause an adverse allergic reaction. Read More...
I think that individuals should choose the therapy that they want, especially if it does no harm. If I had a chronic and terminal disease, I might choose an alternative therapy. If someone chooses to consume vast amounts of vitamin C to prevent cancer, despite little or no evidence that it works, that is their choice. What is troubling is when CAM is offered as an appropriate replacement to evidence based medicine, that is, “the conscientious, explicit and judicious use of current best evidence in making decisions about the care of individual patients.” Best evidence relies upon scientific and clinical research, publication in peer-reviewed (and respected) journals, and sometimes, the opinions of respected authorities in the field.
The National Institutes of Health is a US government agency responsible for biomedical and health related research. One of the “centers” of NIH is NCCAM, which was established in 1991 by order of Congress. In fact, Senator Tom Harkin (D, Iowa) pushed for the formation of the center because he had been cured of allergies by taking bee pollen supplements, despite the fact that there is no scientific evidence that bee pollen would do so. In fact, there’s more evidence that bee pollen will cause an adverse allergic reaction. Read More...