Category: Politics and Regulation
Obamacare and CAM
Practitioners of so-called “complementary and alternative medicine” currently enjoy a certain measure of government largesse in the form of state laws mandating coverage of their services by private health insurance plans. The federal Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (often referred to as the Affordable Care Act, or “ACA,” and sometimes as “Obamacare”) has the potential of putting a significant dent in this forced...
GSK Pays $3 Billion Fine
The following article is reposted from NeuroLogicaBlog. Happy Independence Day to all our American readers. The pharmaceutical giant, GlaxoSmithKline, has agreed to pay three billion dollars in fines to settle three charges of fraud brought by the FDA. This is the largest health fraud settlement in US history. What are the implications of this settlement for how the pharmaceutical industry is regulated in...
NCCAM on “integrative medicine”: What’s in a word?
I don’t know how I’ve missed this, given that it’s been in existence now for a month and a half, but I have. Regular readers (and even fairly recent readers, given that I write about this topic relatively frequently) know that I’m not a big fan of the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM). (Come to think of it, neither...
Dept. of Education to Council on Chiropractic Education: “Straighten Up!”
Our last look at the Council on Chiropractic Education (CCE), about 18 months ago, found the CCE deeply embroiled in a heated dispute among various chiropractic factions over new accreditation standards for chiropractic colleges. Today we offer an update on that situation. Update: the CCE is deeply embroiled in a heated dispute among various chiropractic factions over new accreditation standards for chiropractic...
California Acupuncture Board: a Mockery of Consumer Protection
Many of the specific issues that the Governor and the Legislature asked the Commission to review have festered because the [California] Acupuncture Board has often acted as a venue for promoting the profession rather than regulating the profession. — Little Hoover Commission, Regulation of Acupuncture: A Complementary Therapy Framework: September 2004, page 63. On March 12, 2012, during a brief Sunset Review...
Legislative Alchemy: 2012.5
Legislative alchemy, as faithful SBM readers know, is the process by which state legislatures and Congress take scientifically implausible and unproven treatments and diagnostic methods and turn them into licensed health care practices and legally sold products. Previous posts have explored this phenomenon in naturopathy, chiropractic and acupuncture. Our last report on the legislative efforts of CAM providers appeared almost six months ago,...
Foolishness or Fraud? Bogus Science at NCCAM
Voodoo science is a sort of background noise, annoying but rarely rising to a level that seriously interferes with genuine scientific discourse… The more serious threat is to the public, which is not often in a position to judge which claims are real and which are voodoo. Those who are fortunate enough to have chosen science as a career have an obligation...
POM: Not So Wonderful
“POM Wonderful” is a brand of pomegranate juice. It is manufactured by a company owned by Linda and Stewart Resnick, California billionaires who pretty much single-handedly created a multi-million dollar market for pomegranate juice where none existed before. Or, as LA Times columnist Michael Hilzik wrote, It has long been clear that the most wonderful thing about Pom Wonderful pomegranate juice is...
Choosing Wisely: Five things Pharmacists and Patients Should Question
Is the health care spending tide turning? Unnecessary medical investigations and overtreatment seems to have entered the public consciousness to an extent I can’t recall in the past. More and more, the merits of medical investigations such as mammograms and just this week, PSA tests are being being widely questioned. It’s about time. Previous attempts to critically appraise overall benefits and consequences...
The regulation of nonsense
The most meticulous regulation of nonsense must still result in nonsense. — Edzard Ernst, M.D., PhD., professor, Complementary Medicine, Peninsula Medical School, University of Exeter, UK One necessity of licensing so-called “complementary and alternative,” or “CAM,” practitioners is to spell out exactly what is encompassed in the CAM scope of practice. This is unfortunate for the practitioners because it forces an exposé...