Centre turns away from healing herbs

摘要

A decade ago, US National Institutes of Health (NIH) director Harold Varmus was invited to quit when he opposed a senator's plans to elevate a small NIH office into a research centre for testing the validity of alternative therapies.rnHaving grown from those modest beginnings, the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM) in Bethesda, Maryland, celebrates its tenth anniversary this week. It still draws fire from traditional scientists, who complain that by the very act of studying therapies outside the realm of conventional medicine, it has legitimized them.rnBut, many of the centre's clinical trials have ended up disproving alternative therapies rather than endorsing them. One study published in July 2005 (R. B. Turner et al. N. Engl. J. Med. 353, 341-348; 2005) showed that the herb echinacea neither prevented nor relieved the symptoms of rhinovirus infections, the most common cause of the 'common cold'; sales of echinacea fell markedly thereafter (see graphic). "We are in fact unbiased," says Josephine Briggs, who took over as centre director early last year, having overseen the NIH's kidney research for almost a decade until 2006. "We are directing research that will be rigorous."