Question:
Just five years ago, many academics would not have gone near suchstudies, for fear they would become a laughingstock. And while alternativetherapies remain hugely controversial in the staid world of science --"quackupuncture," is how one vocal critic, Dr. Victor Herbert of the MountSinai School of Medicine, summed up the University of Maryland's work --large, multimillion-dollar clinical trials are getting under way this yearat some of the nation's most prestigious university hospitals. "The scientific games have begun," declared Dr. David Eisenberg,director of the Center for Alternative Medicine Research and Education atBeth Israel Deaconness Medical Center in Boston. Or, as Dr. Barrie Cassileth, chief of integrative medicine at MemorialSloan-Kettering Cancer Center in Manhattan, said: "The research is justcoming into its maturity. It's bar mitzvah time." The boom is being driven by the National Institutes of Health, which,under pressure from Congress, has sharply increased its budget for studiesof alternative medicine. Eight years ago, much to the chagrin of theinstitutes leadership, Congress required the institutes to establish anOffice of Alternative Medicine, a tiny operation with a budget to match,just $2 million. "It was," said Dr. Daniel Moerman, a medical anthropologist at theUniversity of Michigan, "like setting up an office of deviltry within theCatholic Church." But after a rocky beginning, the office is gaining acceptance at theinstitutes and is setting the tone for scientists around the country. Lastyear, Congress upgraded the office, making it the National Center forComplementary and Alternative Medicine, which means it now has grant-makingauthority. Its yearly budget has grown to $68 million. In October, a newdirector came on board, Dr. Stephen E. Straus, a virologist and longtimeN.I.H. insider whom Dr. Harold Varmus, the former director of the institutesand once one of the program's biggest detractors, describes as "a reallydistinguished scientist." At the same time, hospitals and medical schools are bowing to economicreality: alternative medicine is big business. According to the NutritionBusiness Journal, an industry trade publication, Americans spent $27.2billion in 1998 on providers of alternative health care, including those inchiropractic, traditional Chinese medicine, homeopathy, naturopathy andmassage therapy. Sales of herbs are also growing, to $4.4 billion last year,from nearly $2.5 billion in 1995, the journal said. And a survey of more than 2,000 adults, conducted by Dr. Eisenberg andpublished in November 1998 in The Journal of the American MedicalAssociation, estimated that 46 percent of the American population hadvisited a practitioner of alternative health care in 1997, up from 36percent in 1990. Patients like Mr. Katcoff, who had never before triedalternative therapies, are increasingly doing so.

Answer: Couple of quick support points.

1. Columbia Presbyterian in NYC is enthusiastically embracing everyknown kind of alternative medicine and making few bones about it: themore legitimate treatments there are, the more we get paid for by thirdparty payers.

2. Acupuncture must certainly be a placebo for many people, just as allmedicines are. Dr. Mathew Lee, chief of medicine at Rusk Institute forRehabilitaie medicine is a practitioner. He can give me a few weeks ofrelief from shoulder pain with a twenty minute treatment. takes acouple of days to take hold. I still have to use my Ultram andCelebrex, but they work better. And I sleep better.

3. Lee has used infa red photography to sh0w increase in body temp inareas stuck by needles. Something happens.

4. Animals respond to acupuncture, I am told. Might have to ask a vetto confirm it.

5. The electricity doesn't seem to do boo-diddly. It wasn't routinelyused by the Chinese during the exxty ex dynasties.

If you wonder if acupuncture can help, find the best in town, an MD ifpossible, because in many states either of us could practice if we couldbuy some needles. (Dr Lee does not mind giving me the needles he uses onme and I have been able to give myself a few gigs, which works for atime, but not as good as the good doc himself.