April 2002

HHS Quietly Releases White House Commission
Report on Alternative Medicine

Washington, D.C. - The Department of Health and Human Services recently released the final report of the White House Commission on Complementary and Alternative Medicine Policy without fanfare, simply posting the recommendations on the Commission's website, Reuters Health reported.

The recommendations by the commission's 20-member panel are not binding, but commission chair Jim Gordon, a psychiatrist and director of the Center for Mind-Body Medicine, said he thinks they will be scrutinized and acted on despite other pressing issues on the health-care agenda.

"The reason the commission was created is that a major portion of the American public is using these therapies and they want better information on them," Gordon said. "So if the public demands that this report be attended to, the report will be attended to."

The commission estimated in its report, released in late March, that 158 million Americans spent $17 billion on dietary supplements in 2000. Controversial from the start, the commission took several hits during its two-year existence, including, as the final report was drafted, a public airing of dissatisfaction from two panelists.

Joseph Fins, director of medical ethics at New York Presbyterian Hospital-Cornell and Tierona Low Dog, a New Mexico-based acupuncturist, wrote a separate statement, included in the report's appendix. They said the commission did not "appropriately acknowledge the limitations of unproven and unvalidated CAM interventions or adequately address minimization of risk."

Gordon countered that the report is balanced and fair, and said it should serve as a launching point, not an endpoint. "This report is a ground plan, a map for ways to integrate complementary and alternative medicine approaches to health-care into the system," Gordon said. "It lays out the next steps we need to take."

The report urged more federal funding of basic research, and for training investigators and practitioners. The commission panel also called on the government to make sure that accurate information on CAM is available to the public.

This could be done by creating a task force at HHS to coordinate information exchange within the government, Gordon said. Such a group could help insurers and employers decide which CAM interventions should be covered. The panel said insurers should consider covering techniques and therapies that have been shown to be safe and effective and to improve health or functioning.

HHS spokesman Bill Hall said he did not expect HHS to move any time soon. "There's a lot that needs to be digested first before taking the next step of saying where we're going to go," Hall said. "At this point, it's premature to say what the future holds."

Several Senate and House members have been supportive of complementary and alternative medical practices, and may hold hearings on the report, Gordon predicted. Among them is Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa. A spokesman for Harkin said he was exploring the schedule for an opening for such a hearing.

To view the full report, sign on to the HHS website: http://www.whccamp.hhs.gov/finalreport.html

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