每一个使用者只能投一票. 正面票值十分,负面票扣十分. 在众多建议中,
University of Maryland 的一名教授发难: 要求政府停止拨款给国家另类及补
充疗法研究中心 (NCCAM). 这项建议几乎获得了一面倒的支持并得到了8940分的
高分—几乎和伊拉克撤军同分.
建议原文如下:
Defund the National Center for Complementary and Alternative
Medicine (NCCAM)
Biomedical research funding is falling because of the nation's
budget problems, but biomedical research itself has never been more
promising, with rapid progress being made on a host of diseases.
Here's a way to increase the available funding to NIH without
increasing the NIH budget: halt funding to NCCAM, the National Center
for Complementary and Alternative Medicine. This Center was created
not by scientists, who never thought it was a good idea, but by
Congress, and specifically by just two Congressmen in the 1990's who
believed in particular "alternative" (but scientifically dubious)
treatments. Defunding NCCAM would save at least $225 million,
possibly more.
Defunding NCCAM would also provide a direct societal benefit.
Practitioners of so-called "alternative" medicines constantly refer to
NIH's support as a way of validating their practices and beliefs, most
of which are not supported by evidence. The fact is that after >10
years, NCCAM has not yet found a single piece of positive evidence for
any of these methods, which include acupuncture, "qi", homoepathy,
magnet therapy, and other treatments.
Any legitimate, promising medical treatment can be funded by one
of the existing NIH Institutes. There's no need for a separate center
for "alternative" therapies - but what has happened is that NCCAM has
become a last refuge for poorly designed, unscientific studies that
couldn't get funded through the normal peer-reviewed process.
A useful discussion of this issue and the history of NCCAM can be
found at http://www.quackwatch.org/01QuackeryRelatedTopics/nccam.html.
We can quickly save $225 million and move the funding into more
promising research programs by eliminating NCCAM.
事实上美国的科学界在1992年政府决定推动另类疗法研究之后就没有停止对
各式各样另类疗法的批判 (当然也包含中医). 不断有知名科学家, 包括了诺贝
尔化学奖得主 Paul Berg, 美国物理协会会长 Allen Bromley, 写信给参众议员
指出所有的另类及补充疗法都是伪科学,并要求政府废除 NCCAM. 2002 年美国著
名怀疑论网站 www.quackwatch.com 的发起人 Wallace I. Sampson 终于正式发
难, 他在网路上发表了 “Why the National Center for Complementary and
Alternative Medicine (NCCAM) Should Be Defunded”, 并获得了一定程度的
回响.