Tom Harkin is a toxin in the bloodstream of American science. Watch this report on his legacy: billions of dollars swirling down the drain of alternative medicine.
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Tom Harkin is a toxin in the bloodstream of American science. Watch this report on his legacy: billions of dollars swirling down the drain of alternative medicine.
In the end it appears that the system worked: research was done, conclusions were published, and these "treatments" were found to have no benefits.
The logical thing to do with NCCAM or YECCH or whatever it calls itself these days, is to reduce the funding to a level that can support writing occasional grants for testing whatever new wild claims come along, and promulgating its published results to the general public.
Shutting it down entirely will only drive the whole subject back underground, where the worst kinds of scams flourish. Cutting off research funding entirely will only serve the quacks' rhetorical and political agendas. Therefore keep it alive, keep it publishing, and in all likelihood it will keep debunking one thing after another.
The complaint that "the money" could have been spent doing real medicine is nonsense: the entire federal government is in desperate need of adequate funding. The only solution is to restore a truly progressive tax system including capital gains and transaction taxes on investments. We should be demanding such an abundance of money for science, that funding a few alties won't matter.