This is terribly dismaying. Very little research is being done in any case on natural, safe alternatives and now there is a fight to shut down the very little that is being done. They call natural, safe methods of healing pseudoscience??
That is a much better term for pharmaceuticals treating “psychiatric problems.” Psychiatry is a true pseudoscience. There is not a single test to confirm mental illness. It’s all hogwosh.
This is dismaying. I’ve cured two decades of extreme irritable bowel syndrome, psoriasis, joint pain in my knees and I’ve greatly improved endometriosis with alternative care. ALL OF THESE CONDITIONS were treated with what these people are calling scientifically valid methods prior to my healing myself through natural means and their g-ddamned “science” made me worse IN EVERY CASE!!
I feel profoundly sickened and saddened right now. My only chance of healing is through natural means and there are people actively trying to take our freedoms away from us and insisting we be poisoned by pharma…because it is pharma they are calling science. Pharma never heals. It masks symptoms. And keeps you hooked for life.
This is a travesty talked about in the Washington Post:
The impending national discussion about broadening access to health care, improving medical practice and saving money is giving a group of scientists an opening to make a once-unthinkable proposal: Shut down the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine at the National Institutes of Health.
The notion that the world’s best-known medical research agency sponsors studies of homeopathy, acupuncture, therapeutic touch and herbal medicine has always rankled many scientists. That the idea for its creation 17 years ago came from a U.S. senator newly converted to alternative medicine’s promise didn’t help.
Although NCCAM has a comparatively minuscule budget and although it is a “center” rather than an “institute,” making it officially second-class in the NIH pantheon, the principle is what mattered. But as NIH’s budget has flattened in recent years, better use for NCCAM’s money has also become an issue.
“With a new administration and President Obama’s stated goal of moving science to the forefront, now is the time for scientists to start speaking up about issues that concern us,” Steven Salzberg, a genome researcher and computational biologist at the University of Maryland, said last week. “One of our concerns is that NIH is funding pseudoscience.”
Salzberg suggested that NCCAM be defunded on an electronic bulletin board that the Obama transition team set up to solicit ideas after November’s election. The proposal generated 218 comments, most of them in favor, before the bulletin board closed on Jan. 19.
NCCAM has grown steadily since its founding in 1992, largely at the insistence of Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), as the Office of Alternative Medicine (OAM) with a budget of $2 million. In 1998, NIH director and Nobel laureate Harold Varmus pushed to have all alternative medicine research done through NIH’s roughly two dozen institutes, with OAM coordinating, and in some cases paying for, the studies. Harkin parried with legislation that turned OAM into a higher-status “center” (although not a full-fledged “institute”), and boosted its budget from $20 million to $50 million. NCCAM’s budget this year is about $122 million.
Research in alternative medicine is done elsewhere at NIH, notably in the National Cancer Institute, whose Office of Cancer Complementary and Alternative Medicine also has a budget of $122 million.
The entire NIH alternative medicine portfolio is about $300 million a year, out of a total budget of about $29 billion. (NIH will get an additional $10.4 billion in economic stimulus money over the next two years, of which $31 million is expected to go to NCCAM.) (rest of article here)
Wow, I missed this the first time around. Yeah, I think I’ve posted before that I have the SAME concerns about electronic records. Health professionals DO treat people differently. When I told my GYN about my Bipolar Diagnosis, she said, “Ohh” and her eyes got wide. It was the weirdest thing. And of course the woman in the ER collapsed and died… it really makes me want to move far away from here… but once we have electronic records, that won’t matter.
And a travesty about cutting the measly funding for alternative methods. The motto is “Mask the symptom, let the disease be.” because then you have a patient for life, which means more $$
Do Not lose Heart! No one can take away the truth. I stumbled upon your blog and I’m glad I did. I’ll be coming back.
Peace,
Dr. Garber
I don’t understand the concern? I go to a ND here in WA state and he (as far as I know) doesn’t rely on Washington D.C. for ANYTHING … but then again maybe I’m wrong. My ND is even in partnership with another man and they are manufacturing supplements – it’s called BioGenesis. And I think they’re making some money at it. Of the supplements I take – 70% are his brand.
My only concern would be IF my insurance co. didn’t pay ANYTHING to the ND … but I guess everyone would be there then.
I get NOTHING right now from M.D.’s and I rely on Chiropractic and ND with Hep C, Hypothyroid and Adrenal Exhaustion.
I hope you’re able to expunge your records one day.
Your recovery is quite miraculous and was done with a TON of work – Gianna!
Regearding EMR In the Uk
http://www.genewatch.org/sub-563487
The plan was propsed by large pharmacutical corporations and the government originally passed the bill!!!
NCCAM budget is
“$300 million a year, out of a total budget of about $29 billion.”
That’s about 1%.
Heaven-forbid, we spend one percent of the NIH budget on finding out more about the ONLY THINGS that work to heal in the area of “mental illness”!!!!
Am I missing something here?
We’re gonna toss a couple of TRILLION to bail-out Wall Street and the CEO’s of failing companies…..and, we can’t scrape up a little money to learn more about how to help people get well/stay well? People who are really suffering….Help turn their lives around…..Keeping them from becoming disabled?
With all the information that’s been coming out in the press for years……Injury from “off-label” psych drugs….Now that the Supreme Court has ruled on preemption….it will be for prescription use as well…
These drugmakers are gonna have the solvency sued outta them – hopefully go bankrupt….Couldn’t happen to a nicer bunch…..
They can’t keep selling these drugs for long, especially if there are proven methods that work that are safer – So, they’re gonna try to make sure nobody can “prove” safer alternative methods……
A monopoly….that’s what psychotropics are….
Actually, because the drugmakers are so closely tied in with the NIH, NIMH, NAMI…. a “Cartel” would be a better word!!!
Well, if they shut down NCCAM, more people are gonna have to just figure it out on their own….helping each other out – helping each other find things that work…..
And, with any luck – people will start getting well, and the cartel goes outta business!!!
Duane
No, I don’t disagree with you but my point is those same people will be inappropriately labeled be it w/ EMR or normal records.
EMRs would simply make it easier to follow you.
and how about all the people who naively get caught in the system from here on out…inappropriately labeled with something that will lead to a life-time of discrimination from a large percentage of health professionals?
Yes, there is a big brother aspect to it… but the same aspect applies to the system as it is today.
Taking the example of Life Insurance… If one applies for life coverage, you will be asked to complete a waiver that would access your medical records from your providers. The provider would, if contacted by the insurance company, fax over the information.
Ultimately, your comment “Never mention it again to another treating doctor…” is the only way to go.
Hey… thanks for your blog, it is ammazing :)… I also got cured of galstones with diet and naturopathic medicine, my doictor laughed at me when I told him I ws not going to get my gallbladder removed before trying alternative methods… he told me “you and your naturopathic quack methods, you are so hard headed”.. I told him “bullshit, the hard headed, tunnel vision human being is oyu… you believe everything your professors told oyu and you never questioned it…” (obviously we know each other very well)…. 6 months later I didn’t had a trace of gallstones… he told me “oh, you were lucky you are one in 10 millions”.. and I told him “bullshit… you know something happened but you don’t want just to accept this thing works.
I don’t know if you are familiar with the Bill C-51 in Canada, read:
http://www.cbc.ca/health/story/2008/05/29/f-c51natural-products.html
thanks!
I feel the exact same way about the electronic records.
http://naturalgal.wordpress.com/2009/01/09/electronic-health-records/
http://naturalgal.wordpress.com/2009/01/28/klobuchar-calls-for-electronic-health-records-at-first-judiciary-committee-hearing/
Exactly what Kathleen suggested…psychiatric diagnosis, or any other inappropriate diagnosis following you around forever. It’s already hard enough to shake psych diagnosis and it’s well documented that psych patients get much worse treatment and even often DIE because their providers don’t believe their physical complaints…
it’s dangerous…
I fully intend to ditch every doctor that has my diagnosis as soon as I’m off disability and try to cleanse my record of it. Never mention it again to another treating doctor….
crazies cannot be trusted and so their reporting of serious health conditions are often not taken seriously…
also over-diagnosis is so rampant, and well, frankly, I don’t think anyone should be diagnosed with psychiatric disorders to begin with…but being that tons and tons of people don’t even fit the basic criteria of what they’re being labeled it’s even more dangerous and insidious.
also psychiatric diagnosis right now makes you ineligible for life-insurance, most medical insurance and all sorts of other things…
it’s big brother waiting to happen.
What is your concern w/ the electronic records, Gianna?
Gianna,
Do you think it will be more difficult with the electronic records to escape a psychiatric diagnosis? And do you think that they will cause doctors to treat patients with diagnoses more poorly (that has been said to be one of the reasons for the shortened life span in those with diagnoses)? These are two concerns I have.
Thank you for your great work. I am always hoping for healing for you….
Kathleen
I keep trying to stay optimistic about Obama but I’m very very skeptical…lots of weird shit going down in the health realms…electronic records being one of them…
That kind of thing we can fight. That’s just politics. There are worse things scientists can do to us… such as…
It is much harder to fight idiots who “prove” that lithium orotate is more dangerous than lithium carbonate by giving laboratory rats the amount of LiOr that is the equivalent of the normal human dose of LiCaO2… not paying any attention to the fact that the orotic acid carrier would energize ALL the elemental lithium, whereas the body could at least TRY to eliminate the elemental lithium in the carbonate carrier…
I feel reasonably certain that Obama will not let this kind of thing pass. I could be wrong, it has happened before.
Hugs,
Moss