Campaign Calls for Alternative Treatments in Clinical Trials
An alternative health company is asking citizens of the United Kingdom to support legislation which would include herbal supplements and other natural treatments in clinical trials comparing the effectiveness of investigational drugs against a placebo.
Sweet Cures of York, a marketer of herbal products and natural remedies, has launched a campaign to gain public support for required testing of alternative medicines alongside new pharmaceuticals and placebos in clinical research that’s conducted as part of the drug approval process.
Representatives from the company point out that evaluating the effectiveness of natural remedies under the same laboratory conditions as investigational medications and placebos gives a truer indication of drug efficacy.
It could also provide healthcare consumers and professionals better scientific evidence for determining which alternative treatments actually work and which don’t — a conclusion that’s often hard to come by given the conflicting claims and limited peer-reviewed research available for many of today’s popular natural products.
Opponents of the proposed measure have expressed concerns that adding alternative medicines into the research mix would make the approval process for new chemotherapies and other prescription medications longer and more expensive than it already is.
Whichever side you support, discussion about using herbal supplements, food-based remedies, and lifestyle changes to treat cancer and other serious conditions is likely to continue. As one herbal expert put it,
“Until tamoxifen and raloxifene are compared to standardized bean soup and/or to kudzu no one knows for sure – not you, me or the ACS.”
If you’d like to learn more about the use of alternative medicines in the US, you can visit the National Center for Complimentary and Alternative Medicine from the National Institutes of Health.
Source: Medical News Today
Related Links: MD Anderson Cancer Center; ScienceDaily
Related Video: Complementary and Alternative Medicine – Healthy Aging from University of California Television
Technorati Tags: allopathic medicine; holistic medicine; health policy; healthcare reform; patient-centered care; clinical oncology; botanicals; pharmacology
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