CAM Therapies Make Newsweek Cover

NEW YORK--The mainstream Newsweek has done something no popular magazine has done in recent memory--featured a positive, if not glowing, cover story on complementary and alternative medicine (CAM). In the Dec. 2 story, which hit newsstands Nov. 25, Senior Editor Geoffrey Cowley wrote that CAM encompasses a number of practices ranging from the credible (acupuncture) to the absurd (coffee enemas).

Be that as it may, he wrote that more Americans visit nonconventional healers (approximately 600 million visits per year) than M.D.s. "So after dismissing CAM therapies as quackery for the better part of a century, the medical establishment now finds itself racing to evaluate them," Cowley wrote. "[CAM's] larger mission is to spawn a new kind of medicine--an integrative medicine that employs the rigor of modern science without being constrained by it. If the dream is realized, the terms `complementary' and `alternative' will become meaningless, proponents say."

CAM use has been on the rise since 1990, when results from a Harvard study showed 34 percent of U.S. adults reported using at least one unconventional therapy. Between then and 1997, the number rose to 59 percent.

The article notes the credence behind CAM therapies has grown proportionally with the rise of government-sponsored research--from $2 million a year to $100 million--and the creation of the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM) in 1998. Studies currently underway include the $16 million study comparing the effects of five regimens on arthritis: glucosamine, chondroitin sulfate, a combination of the two, the prescription arthritis drug Celebrex or a placebo.

The article also reported there is a hope that traditional and conventional practices can one day merge, and that insurance plans--from Medicare to the smallest private health plan--will cover CAM therapies.

"It's good to find a major consumer news magazine give recognition to the growing importance of CAM practices to the American public," said David Seckman, executive director of the National Nutritional Foods Association (NNFA), a supporter of increased funding to NCCAM. "We agree with [Cowley's] assertion that there's no substitute for knowledge ... and how alterative medicine and Western medicine can work well together."

In stories that accompanied the feature, Anne Underwood discussed the basics of Chinese medicine, David Noonan spoke of CAM therapies for children and Claudia Kalb reported on natural alternatives for depression.

These articles can be found at www.msnbc.com/news/838318.asp?0cv=KA01.