Critics Question Validity of NIH Panel Recommendation on Acupuncture
After an independent panel of experts convened by the National Institutes of Health released a statement in November 1997 supporting the use of acupuncture to treat chronic pain, severe nausea, and other conditions, national publications jumped to spread the news to their readers.
The New York Times, USA Today, Time, Science, and Science News, to name just a few, immediately reported that acupuncture therapy had climbed out of the alternative closet and taken the stage in the theatre of accepted medical practice. This may have led many patients to assume that acupuncture would be beneficial to them, when, in fact, the NIH abstract of the report simply stated that studies had shown the procedure to be of some benefit in the treatment of chronic pain and nausea.
The NIH panel’s consensus statement reads in part: "There is sufficient evidence . . . of acupuncture’s value to expand its use into conventional medicine and to encourage further studies of its physiology and clinical value."
However, a November 1997 press release by The Scientific Review of Alternative Medicine (SRAM) condemns the statement, stating the panel’s conclusions were erroneous and tainted by a favorable bias toward acupuncture therapy because many of the panel’s members were already acupuncture proponents.
"The NIH panel was conceived in all likelihood with an agenda to promote the acceptance of acupuncture by the public, press, insurance plans, HMOs and federal and state medical plans," says SRAM editor and Stanford University Professor of Clinical Medicine Wallace Sampson, MD, in the press release.
According to most of the accepted studies, the editors of SRAM contend, acupuncture is no more effective than placebo.
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