Byline: LUCINDA FLEESON Knight-Ridder
BETHESDA, Md. Can herbs cure warts? Does powdered shark cartilage help cancer? Can music help brain injuries?
These are questions that most of the conventional medical world would have ridiculed until just recently. Some experts still do.
But now they are being seriously investigated, and in some cases funded, by the National Institutes of Health, or NIH, through its fledgling Office of Alternative Medicine.
Founded in January 1992, the office, called the OAM, now has its third director and is searching for a new one. It has been racked by charges of political interference, disorganization, ineptitude and a confused scientific mission.
Many fringe-treatment activists, particularly in the field of cancer, have charged that the office has dragged its feet in evaluating some treatments.
Scientific researchers, in turn, retort that the activists want the office to abandon good science in order to put an NIH seal of approval on unproved cancer treatments.
The smoke is now clearing, and two major opponents have departed the battleground. The controversial director of the office, Joe Jacobs, quit in October, charging that congressmen were using their political influence to interfere with how research should be conducted. Meanwhile, Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, who sponsored the creation of the office has met the ultimate political interference; because Democrats lost their Senate majority in November's election, he will no longer head the subcommittee that oversees appropriations for the OAM.
For all of its Washingtonian infighting, the debate revolves around some important questions with lasting significance:
What constitutes good …
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