Anyone know about this meta-study regarding Alternative Therapies?

[Ashles]

I just read this article from my local paper:

http://www.theargus.co.uk/news/4535009.Alternative_therapy_helps_paralysed_Brighton_man/

One person comments below the article:

The article does not give a lot of information bout the therapy, but a meta-study performed by the Institute of Medicine, part of the US National Academy of Sciences, in 2005 of complementary and alternative medicine (i.e they looked at scientific studies examining a variety of therapies) found that 38.4% of the studies concluded positive effect or possibly positive (12.4%) and only 0.69% concluded harmful effect from the therapy.

Does anyone know anything about such a study?

 

[Professor Yaffle]

I just read this article from my local paper:

http://www.theargus.co.uk/news/4535009.Alternative_therapy_helps_paralysed_Brighton_man/

One person comments below the article:



Does anyone know anything about such a study?

I wonder if it included studies from Chinese and Russian journals...

No trial published in China or Russia/USSR found a test treatment to be ineffective.

http://www.sciencedirect.com/scienc...serid=10&md5=3fc4916605b63e4892e703462a8a80df

 

[Lucky]

It's here.

A quick browse suggests it's very well researched and thorough, and has reasonably sensible conclusions.

From the Executive Summary:

This report’s core message is therefore as follows: The committee recommends that the same principles and standards of evidence of treatment effectiveness apply to all treatments, whether currently labeled as conventional medicine or CAM. Implementing this recommendation requires that investigators use and develop as necessary common methods, measures, and standards for the generation and interpretation of evidence necessary for making decisions about the use of CAM and conventional therapies.

The reader's comment you quoted contains a rather critical ... erm ... typo:

found that 38.4% of the studies concluded positive effect or possibly positive (12.4%) and only 0.69% concluded harmful effect from the therapy

From the report (p135):

The largest number of treatments described in the reviews were classified as insufficient evidence of an effect (n = 82; 56.6 percent), followed by positive effect (n = 36; 24.8 percent) and possibly positive effect (n = 18; 12.4 percent).

 

[JJM]

Institute of Medicine Committee Issues Irresponsible "CAM" Report http://www.quackwatch.org/07PoliticalActivities/iomreport.html