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After three years, $45,000, and five attempts at in vitro fertilization,
Gil and Christie Goren said, "Enough."
Frustrated by their experiences with fertility specialists and modern
medicine in general, the Los Angeles couple decided to take
a different approach to getting pregnant. Foregoing test tubes and
artificial insemination, they placed their hopes and dreams for a child
into the hands of a group of traditional Maori healers visiting from New
Zealand. The head of the healers, "Papa Joe," has told Christie that
following his treatment—which involves deep tissue massage and
chanting—she will likely become pregnant within three weeks.
The Gorens are not alone. They are among a growing number of
Americans whose disenchantment with
modern health care has led them to seek alternative therapies. From
acupuncture to homeopathy, herbal supplements to
chiropractic, complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) has become an $48
billion a year industry in America—one that traditional hospitals
and medical schools are now eagerly embracing. But do these treatments actually work? Are they safe? And have
medical professionals put aside their doubts in the efficacy of
complementary medicine treatments in order to cash in on a
multimillion-dollar market?
In "The Alternative Fix," FRONTLINE® examines the
controversy over complementary and alternative medicine. The one-hour
documentary features interviews with staunch supporters,
skeptical scientists, and other observers on both sides of the
alternative medicine debate and questions whether hospitals that offer
alternative therapies are inappropriately conveying a sense of
legitimacy to these largely untested and scientifically unproven treatments.
FRONTLINE traces the mainstreaming of alternative medicine to the
halls of Congress and one U.S. senator's allergies. Viewers meet Sen.
Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), who recalls complaining to a friend about his
terrible allergies. The friend said he knew someone who could cure the
senator's allergies using bee pollen.
"I went on this very tough regimen of taking a lot of bee pollen,
sometimes as much as sixty pills a day," Harkin tells FRONTLINE. "And
literally on about the tenth day, all of a sudden my allergies just
left. Well, that's when I began to think, 'We've got to have somebody
looking at these different approaches.'"
Harkin, the chairman of the Labor, Health and Human Services, and
Education Committee, convinced Congress to allocate $2 million to the
National Institutes of Health (NIH) for the study of alternative
medicine. Ten years later, the National Center for Complementary and
Alternative Medicine (NCCAM) has a budget of over $100 million and is
funding hundreds of research projects around the nation. Still, hard
evidence on whether alternative treatments
actually work is hard to come by: large scale randomized controlled
clinical trials take years and millions of dollars. Also, some
alternative practioners argue that their therapies are not appropriate
for traditional scientific testing. Naturopathy, for example, is a
system of medicine which tailors remedies to each particular patient, so
two people with an ear infection might receive two very different
treatments. It would not be possible, proponants say, to evaluate these
individualized treatments in a large scale trial.
So the question remains: Do complementary and alternative medicine
treatments actually work? In "The Alternative Fix," FRONTLINE examines
the few research studies conducted on alternative treatments, while also
previewing several larger studies currently underway, including one of
the largest studies ever done on the efficacy of acupuncture.
Yet even if these new studies prove that the treatments in question are
no more effective than a placebo, will the legions of consumers who
spend billions on them be swayed?
Not likely, alternative treatment proponents say. "People are fed up
with being passive recipients of authoritarian, paternalistic medicine,"
says noted alternative healer Dr. Andrew Weil. "And many of
these systems make people feel they are more autonomous, more in charge
of their own destiny."
Hester Young agrees. In the past fifteen years, Young has battled
breast cancer, rectal cancer, and lung cancer. But after undergoing
chemotherapy and other traditional therapies the first two times around,
she says she simply couldn't face the debilitating treatments when her
doctor diagnosed cancer in her lungs. Although never confirmed through
a biopsy, she began looking for alternative cancer treatments.
Today, six years later, she credits her survival to a special
regimen prescribed by Dr. Nicholas Gonzalez, an alternative cancer
specialist who prescribes controversial—and expensive—
treatments such as repeated coffee enemas and megadoses of supplements
to cancer patients desperate for a cure. The NIH is currently studying
Dr. Gonzalez's claims that nutritional therapy can help prolong life for
cancer patients. But if the tests conclude the doctor's treatments are
ineffective, Hester Young doesn't want to hear it. "Nothing they could
say would make me feel differently," she says, "because I'm feeling well
and it's a success as far as I'm concerned."
Despite the lack of positive evidence, some of the nation's leading
hospitals and medical centers have embraced lucrative alternative
therapies, offering them alongside more traditional treatments. New York's Beth Israel Hospital, for
example, now houses the Continuum Center for Health and Healing, which
offers such alternative treatments as guided imagery, acupuncture, and
homeopathy—despite the fact that some practitioners confess to not
knowing how or why their treatments work. In the documentary, viewers
watch Beth Israel's Dr. Edward Shalts treat a five-year-old boy's
behavior problems with homeopathic pills that contain microscopic
amounts of ground up tarantula—a treatment other doctors say can't
possibly be effective. The charges don't seem to trouble Dr. Matt Fink,
former president and CEO of Beth Israel Hospital. "If hospitals don't get involved in these
kinds of programs they will lose patients because patients will go
elsewhere," Fink tells FRONTLINE. "So, like any other new discoveries,
you can either lead or you can follow."
"The Alternative Fix" also follows the money to examine the big
business of herbal supplements. In 1994, Congress passed the Dietary
Supplement Health and Education Act (DSHEA), a controversial bill that limited the Food and Drug
Administration's power to regulate dietary supplements at a time when
the FDA was gearing up to increase its regulation of what has since
become an $18 billion a year industry. Supporters claim that the bill
protects the freedom of American consumers to take care of their own
health by assuring access to a range of natural products. Critics say
the bill was passed at the behest of the powerful supplement lobby, and
that without regulation, many supplements are worthless at best, and
dangerous at worst. [Editor's Note: Since this report was first broadcast, the FDA
has banned the sale of dietary supplements containing ephedra, ruling that such supplements
pose "an unreasonable risk of illness or injury."]
FRONTLINE's report continues on this web site, where you'll find
resources for consumers interested in CAM, guides to understanding the controversial scientific evidence on alternative medicine, a report on the history of the tug-of-war between conventional and alternative medical practioners, and more.
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