What to do about CAM?

doi:10.1136/bmj.39360.446528.BE

BMJ 2007;335:736 (13 October), doi:10.1136/bmj.39360.446528.BE

Letters

CAM

What to do about CAM?

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

Doug Kamerow seems excessively tolerant of people who make lotsof money out of unproved and disproved treatments.¹

I prefer the straight talking of his compatriot, Gerald Weissmann,"If the trend persists, perhaps MIT [Massachusetts Instituteof Technology] or Cal Tech will march in step with the medicalschools and offer prizes for integrative alchemy or alternativeengineering."² Or Wallace Sampson, "It is time for Congressto defund the National Center for Complementary and AlternativeMedicine (NCCAM). After ten years of existence and over $200million in expenditures, it has not proved effectiveness forany ‘alternative' method. It has added evidence of ineffectivenessof some methods that we knew did not work before NCCAM was formed."³

That is something that could be done—the expenditure onNCCAM is now close to $1bn (£0.5bn; ${euro}$ 0.7bn).

In the UK National Health Service, primary care trusts are,quite rightly, withdrawing funding from homoeopathy. Tunbridge. . . [Full text of this article]

David Colquhoun, professor of pharmacology

University College London, London WC1E 6BT

d.colquhoun@ucl.ac.uk

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This article has been cited by other articles:

Lewith, G. T (2007). Funding for CAM. BMJ 335: 951-951 [Full text]
Tovey, D. I (2007). Evidence is important but should not be the only consideration: patients' and clinicians' views matter too. BMJ 335: 952-952 [Full text]
Garrow, J. S (2007). How much of orthodox medicine is evidence based?. BMJ 335: 951-951 [Full text]

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