According to this article in the Washington Post, a movement is afoot to defund the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine, which was established in 1992 by an act of Congress to study so-called “complementary” and “alternative” medicine (or CAM, for those who are fond of acronyms).

Steven Novella, a neurologist at the Yale School of Medicine, had this to say about NCCAM: “As a result more than a billion dollars of taxpayer money spent has not changed the practice of CAM one bit. No CAM modality has been abandoned because research showed a lack of efficacy. Neither has any CAM modality been shown to be effective with research of sufficient quality that it has become accepted by mainstream practice. Nothing added or taken away.” Other prominent physicians have echoed Novella’s call to do away with NCCAM – click here and here for examples.

Now, I’m not a big fan of alternative medicine. What I do believe in is taking care of the bodies we were born with, in developing the fortitude to cope with the aches and pains that are part of being alive without running to the doctor for every little thing, and in accepting our inevitable mortality. I’m well aware that there is virtually no evidence that anything in alternative medicine produces clinically significant benefits.

I know that some people swear by their chiropractors or their acupuncturists. That’s fine with me. I also know that some people like to go to a beauty parlor and get fussed over. That’s fine with me, too. Whatever floats your boat. I just don’t think these are the sorts of things that health insurance should indemnify.

Nevertheless, the outrage of these physicians is rather amusing. After all, their profession is the one that gave the world tonsillectomies, appendectomies, hysterectomies for retroverted uteri, and clitoridectomy as a cure for female masturbation. Not to mention a little thing called lobotomy.

According to this book by Nortin M. Hadler, M.D., every year hundreds of billions of dollars are wasted on medicines and treatments which have not been shown to produce clinically significant benefits, including surgery for back pain, surgery for knee pain, routine mammograms, routine colonoscopies, prostatectomies, and the vast majority of cardiac catheterizations and heart bypass surgeries. And, since the possibility for iatrogenic illness always exist, anything they do that does not have clear clinically significant benefits should be considered harmful. Per capita, adjusted for inflation, spending on prescription drugs has increased to seventeen times what it was in 1980. Not seventeen percent more – SEVENTEEN TIMES more. And over the counter and prescription drugs kill 100,000 people a year. Indeed, the medical profession is the third-biggest killer in the country, and the fourth-biggest, cerebrovascular accidents, isn’t even close.

So the self-righteousness some of these docs display towards alternative medicine seems a bit misplaced. Hadler said it best: “I am convinced that complementary and alternative therapies thrive best whenever my guild, which requires and M.D. for admission, is behaving in an unconscionable manner.” These physicians who are shocked – yes, shocked – that anyone would accept money for foisting useless remedies on an unsuspecting public would do well to look in a mirror.