ScienceZoo: The rise and fall of the NIH

ScienceZoo: The rise and fall of the NIH: "The previous business day, however, the NIH issued a release that should cast serious doubt about the agency's scientific credibility and raise questions about where its headed. In the Oct. 5 release, the NIH boasted that it had expanded its National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine to include three new Centers of Excellence for Research on Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM). This is disappointing for at least three reasons and maybe more, but it's late and I'm tired and 3 seems like more than enough. First, there is no 'alternative medicine' or 'alternative scientific method' for investigating whether a particular modality has a benefit in treating disease. Something has either been proven to work using established and accepted methods or it hasn't. There isn't an alternative scientific system in some far-flung corner of Dover, Pa., or a parallel universe. So there is no need for the NIH to segregate out and separately fund so-called 'complementary and alternative medicine' therapies. If there are indications any of these strategies actually offer some benefit, the NIH could --and should-- fund research into them via any of its other institutes, using the rigorous --albeit not perfect-- review strategies it already has in place. Second, the NIH not only appears ignorant of this, they actually tout the"