the alternative fix to be shown on PBS, Nov. 06, 2003 - 9pm.

[Guest guest]

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/altmed/

 

The past few years has seen an explosion in the popularity--and

profitability--of complementary and alternative medicine. Under pressure from

everyone from consumers to Congress--and tempted by huge grants--major hospitals

and medical schools have embraced therapies that they once dismissed as

quackery. So accepted, in fact, have alternative medical treatments become that

an entire center of the National Institutes of Health is now devoted to it. But

the question remains: Do these treatments actually work? FRONTLINE examines the

controversy over complementary and alternative medical treatments.

*****************************

 

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 has become a

$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, " airing Thursday, November 6, at 9 P.M., on PBS (check

local listings), 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 conveying a sense of legitimacy to these largely

untested and scientifically unproven treatments.

 

" It's a big business, " says Dr. Marcia Angell, a senior lecturer at Harvard

Medical School. " A lot of people have a vested interest in complementary and

alternative medicine. "

 

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. It was a move that was

not well received within the traditional medical community.

 

" There was this reaction that witchcraft and sorcery and alchemy and voodoo were

being introduced into the National Institutes of Health, " medical historian

James Whorton says, " and it had no place there, and that this was purely a

political plea. "

 

" The Alternative Fix " also examines the passage of the 1994 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.

 

To Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), one of the bill's proponents, DSHEA is " a bill of

freedom. It's a bill that allows the American people to have access to

high-quality dietary supplements that can enhance their lives and help them live

better lives. "

 

Physicist Dr. Robert Park disagrees. " It would be my candidate for the worst

piece of legislation ever passed, " he says.

 

Park, author of Voodoo Science, notes that one of the key provisions of the act

took away the FDA's ability to ensure that supplements were proven safe and

effective before they made it to drugstore shelves.

 

" Under the [act], " Park says, " the Food and Drug Administration can't really get

involved until, as somebody put it, the bodies start piling up. "

 

Adds Dr. Tom Delbanco of Boston's Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center: " It's

wonderful right now to be someone who makes herbal drugs. I wouldn't be

regulated, no one would be watching over my shoulder. The only people who would

be interested in me are my stockholders to see how big a profit I can make. "

 

Not everyone in the medical community, however, is so skeptical of complementary

and alternative medicine. Some of the nation's leading hospitals and medical

centers, in fact, have embraced these lucrative therapies, offering them

alongside more traditional treatments. New York's Beth Israel Medical Center,

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, for example, viewers watch Beth Israel Dr. Edward Shalts

treat a five-year-old boy's behavior problems with pills that contain

microscopic amounts of ground up tarantula--a treatment other doctors in the

film say can't possibly be effective.

 

The charges don't seem to trouble Dr. Matt Fink, former CEO of Beth Israel

Medical Center. " 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. "

 

Still, 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, five 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.

 

Just ten years ago, Gonzalez's therapy led to a fight with the New York State

Medical Board which found instances of incompetence and negligence in his

evaluation of several patients. Gonzales maintains the case was an attack on his

unconventional cancer regimen.

 

Yet 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. "

 

Christie and Gil Goren feel similarly. At the end of the documentary, viewers

check in with the Gorens. Three weeks have passed and Christie is still not

pregnant. Nevertheless, the couple remains optimistic.

 

" I think if people were to look at this [documentary] and think, 'Oh, they're

just hoping...' " Christie Goren says. " We both feel like, 'What else is there?' "

 

 

 

" The Alternative Fix " is a FRONTLINE co-production with A Little Rain

Productions. The producer, writer, and director is Raney Aronson.

 

FRONTLINE is produced by WGBH Boston and is broadcast nationwide on PBS.

 

 

 

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