******************************************************************************* *** White House Commission on Complementary and Alternative Medicine Policy *** *** Meeting Transcript: Washington, D.C 10/06/00 Morning session *** ******************************************************************************* WHITE HOUSE COMMISSION on COMPLEMENTARY and ALTERNATIVE MEDICINE POLICY + + + Volume II + + + Friday, October 6, 2000 8:40 a.m. Hubert H. Humphrey Building, Room 800 200 Independence Avenue, SW Washington, D.C. PARTICIPANTS: Chairperson: James S. Gordon, M.D., Director The Center for Mind-Body Medicine Commission Members: George M. Bernier, Jr., M.D. Vice President for Education University of Texas Medical Branch Thomas Chappell Co-Founder and President Tom's of Maine, Inc. Effie Poy Yew Chow, Ph.D., R.N., DiplAc (NCCA) Qigong Grandmaster President, East-West Academy of Healing Arts William R. Fair, M.D. Attending Surgeon, Urology (Emeritus) Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center Chairman, Clinical Advisory Board for Health, LLC Joseph J. Fins, M.D., F.A.C.P. Associate Professor of Medicine Weill Medical College of Cornell University Director of Medical Ethics New York Presbyterian Hospital-Cornell Campus Wayne B. Jonas, M.D. Department of Family Medicine Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences Tieraona Low Dog, M.D., A.H.G. (Private Practice) Charlotte Kerr, R.S.M. Traditional Acupuncture Institute, Inc. PARTICIPANTS (continued): Dean Ornish, M.D. President/Director Preventative Medicine Research Institute Clinical Professor of Medicine University of California, San Francisco Conchita M. Paz, M.D. (Private Practice) Julia R. Scott President National Black Women's Health Project Commission Members Not Present: George T. DeVries, III CEO/President American Specialty Health Plans Buford L. Rolin Poarch Band of Creek Indians Executive Staff: Stephen C. Groft, Pharm.D. Executive Director Michele M. Chang, C.M.F., M.P.H. Executive Secretary Joseph M. Kaczmarczyk, D.O., M.P.H. Senior Medical Advisor Doris A. Kingsbury Program Assistant Geraldine B. Pollen, M.A. Senior Program Analyst C O N T E N T S Page No. Session VIII: Guiding Principles of CAM Perspectives and Practice Commission Discussion ................................ 4 Session IX: Not-for-Profit Sector Support for CAM Research Dr. John Templeton, Jr., Templeton Foundation ..... 48 Ms. Dyanne M. Hayes, Conrad N. Hilton Foundation .. 56 Dr. Daniel Callahan, Hastings Center .............. 66 Ms. Teri Ades, American Cancer Society ............ 74 Panel Discussion .................................... 81 Session X: Private Sector Support for CAM Research Mr. Randy Burkholder, Advanced Medical Technology Association .................................... 106 Dr. Raymond Ruddon, Johnson and Johnson .......... 116 Dr. Frank C. Sciavolino .......................... 125 Mr. Mark Blumenthal, American Botanical Council .. 131 Dr. Annette Dickenson, Council for Responsible Nutrition ..................................... 142 Panel Discussion ................................... 149 Public Comment Dr. Richard Levy ................................. 191 Ms. Ingrid Lucis ................................. 196 Ms. Diana Chambers ............................... 201 Ms. Monica Lenz .................................. 209 Mr. Ned Hartfield ................................ 214 Mr. Boyd Landry .................................. 218 Mr. Richard Pavek ................................ 230 Session XI: Outcomes Research Part II - CAM Research and Experimental Study Design Dr. Leanna Standish, Bastyr University ........... 239 Dr. Lydia Segal, Kaiser Permanente .......... 248, 273 Dr. Elaine Cramer, Medical Epidemiology, CDC ..... 250 Dr. Douglas Lloyd, Association of Schools of Public Health ................................. 281 Panel Discussion ................................... 287 CONTENTS (continued): Session XII: Federal Agency Support for CAM Research Mr. John Demakis, Veterans Affairs ............... 306 Dr. Craig Vanderwagen, Indian Health Service ..... 311 Panel Discussion ................................... 317 P R O C E E D I N G S [Opening remarks by Dr. Gordon.] [Moment of silence observed.] Session VIII: Guiding Principles of CAM Perspectives and Practice DR. JONAS: I think there are a number of core issues for CAM research, and instead of me giving a world view, which I think is preposterous, I decided I would just lay out what are some of the themes that affect research especially in these areas. We talked many if not all of these already, but I would just like to list them for you and talk a little about some of the wording that might be important in terms of that. I think some of the core issues include, first, public impact, not only the impact of the public's interest in these areas, but what research does in terms of actually providing public impact. Paul Starr wrote a book, a magnificent book, on the social transformation of medicine, and I think this involves, really, the social transformation of science. We are in the process of the democratization of science. Figuring out how the public and the practitioners, as we saw yesterday, can have a place at the table of scientific agenda, scientific methodology, and the type of information we want to see science produce is a key issue. I think the second core issue for CAM is multiculturalism, seeing different world views. I think we have to be able to travel around the circle. We need to have a circle in which individuals can say, this is what I see from this part of the circle. Like the blind man and the elephant, we all have a little bit of a part, but if we don't communicate, if we don't have the skills to go around and communicate the aspect that we see, then in fact we will never have, really, the whole truth. I think the third issue is the issue of chronic illness. I think there is no question that modern medicine, and it is acknowledged all of the world, has found an extremely powerful method of managing acute illness, infectious disease, trauma, drug therapy, surgery, et cetera. There is no question that all over the world, the modern Western medical system is the envy of this. The result of that is it has been very successful in the Western world, and we are no longer dying at young ages anymore because it is so successful. That has created another problem, and that is the problem of us aging, if that is a problem, and therefore an increase in the prevalence of chronic illness. Chronic illness is different than acute illness. It is complex. It requires a multifactorial and a holistic approach. Very few magic bullets are likely to be found in the area of chronic illness. The fourth area, I think which is at the heart of how we should prioritize, certainly, our research in these areas, is health promotion. The term that I use for this, the scientific term, is salutogenesis. That is the opposite of pathogenesis, which is the process by which disease occurs. Salutogenesis is studying the process by which health occurs. So how, in fact, on a fundamental, biological mechanism, but in terms of biological research, can we understand this process and therefore facilitate it. I think the fourth critical issue is that we are no longer in the modern materialistic age. We are now in the post-modern information age. So managing information is crucial. We shouldn't call it information management, we should call it knowledge management because there is data, there is information, there is knowledge, and there is wisdom. What we hope, eventually, all to get to is to be able to exchange wisdom, but before we do that, we have to be able to create the data into information, and then create it into knowledge. Knowledge means we all at least understand what the other person is talking about. So it is not sufficient to say, here is the data, show me the facts. We have to know in fact, what is the knowledge that that imparts, what is the meaning and what is the importance of it. What does all this mean for research? I think what it means is that we need to make sure that our research agenda is balancing rigor and relevance. There is a playoff between rigor and relevance. We have heard a lot talking about the importance of science and the importance of rigor, and there is no question about this, the type of research you do has to be rigorous. You have to use good methods in these areas. However, the more focused you become in terms of what is currently acknowledged as the gold standard or the rigorous science, often the less relevant it becomes. There are many examples of this. P-6 acupuncture is the only proven acupuncture treatment that, I think everyone agrees, works for a single condition, and yet P-6 acupuncture is rarely used and is relatively irrelevant for your average acupuncture practice, and there are numerous kinds of examples of that. So I think as we are doing and going forward in research in these areas, we need to change the research hierarchy so that rigor and relevance become balanced rather one dominating the other. MS. KERR: I was hoping to have a little more time to wake up, but I will go. When I reflect on the values and principles that inform, or could inform, our reflections on CAM, I have two paths I thought I might begin. One is that I wanted to reflect on the founding documents of our country that essentially are saying that we are all of equal value, endowed by our creator and with certain inalienable rights. I think it would do us well to reflect on these. It certainly would inform our works here. The other is values that I found to be reflected in some work from the United Kingdom. During the Sir James Watts presidency in the United Kingdom of the Royal Society of Medicine, he initiated a series of colloquia on medicine and complementary therapies. One of the presenters was a Dr. Patrick Patroni at St. Mary's Hospital in London. He, like many of us here, felt that the current biomedical model of today was, and we have all been talking about this for years, based on the Cartesian/Newtonian view of the universe. It was essentially dualistic, mechanistic, and reductionistic. You thought that, of course, which I agree with, that it served us in many wonderful ways, but in about the last 50 or 70 years, there has been a growing change in scientific thinking, and it really hasn't been integrated into the biomedical model of health and disease. In fact, and I still think this is true, we really need to inform ourselves better on the discoveries that are challenging the philosophical underpinnings of our medical model. He goes on to quote some of the innovators of this new thinking, and some of those people who you are well familiar with, are people like Einstein. Einstein, of course, said that, "We may therefore regard matter as being constituted by the regions of space in which the field is extremely intense. There is no place in this new physics -- for field and matter, for field is the only reality." He quotes Heisenberg, David Bowen. Then for those who not only like to hear from the Nobel Prize winners, but visionaries such as Lao-tsu and Plato, and others, he is calling us to apply some of the new scientific thinking to the revitalization of our medical system. What I agree with and what he concludes with is some of the concepts that he feels comes out of the new scientific thinking. I wanted to submit this today, and I want to read just a few of these. These are only eight. The first is that the human organism is a multi- dimensional being, and at one level we are bioenergetic organisms. Second, is matter and energy are interchangeable in the primary ordering factors are not biochemical, molecular, or genetic, but field forces. Third, is that there is an interconnectiveness between all living beings, non-living, microscopic, macroscopic. The whole is greater than the sum of the parts, and the part contains the whole. Fourth, is the linear model of cause, and effect is only partly applicable to disease and health. Fifth, is consciousness plays a role in the physical universe. We each possess a powerful innate capacity for altering both our internal and external environments. Sixth, is health and disease lie along the continuum and represent the organism's intrinsic state of health with the universe. Seventh, is one of the primary tasks of someone entrusted to heal, be it a doctor, priest, or acupuncturist, is to the encourage the innate capacity of the individual in distress and help restore state of balance and harmony. I think these are some good places to start as we reflect on the new science affecting medicine and disease. Thank you. DR. GORDON: Thank you, Charlotte. We are actually giving everybody 3 minutes, it seems like. MS. KERR: I thought we had a minute after the first buzz. DR. GORDON: We have expanded time. [Laughter.] DR. LOW DOG: I started out, really, in the other direction with herbal medicine. Certainly, beginning in my childhood believed that spirit permeated all of our life, and that illness was very much a reflection of an imbalance within ourselves or within the world around us. When I grew up and went on in my life, and later on, went to medical school, that never changed. Medical school, when we got down into anatomy and cellular physiology, I remember coming home and feeling, after I had learned about the nucleus and the cytoplasm and the mitochondria, the cell membrane, G-proteins, I thought, my god, there is a god. This is phenomenal. I am awed and humbled by all that we know of life and science. At the same time, I felt very much that science and spirit were not mutually exclusive, that we could embrace both willingly. In my time as a practitioner, I won't separate Western medicine. It is medicine. It is just all medicine. It is an artificial label that we have given, also to keep our battles and to keep us separate. It is the language of separatism, not bringing us together. What patients really want from us, or want from me -- I can only speak for myself -- is really my time, my hands, my heart, my compassion. They want me to be good at what I know. They don't, at the end of the day, really care if I give them an ace inhibitor or if I give them Hawthorne. They really don't. What they want from me is just to know that for the time we spent together I was completely there for them and I made a safe place. As George and I were talking earlier, I think what is going to come out of all of this is that hopefully we are all going to be better practitioners, we are all going to take a little more time with our patients, do a little bit more exploration of ourselves, think a little bit more about what healing means versus curing, and that that is the medicine, not so much if we are using acupuncture or chiropractic or surgery. They all have value. They all have a place. Science can help get us there, but I just hope that we don't forget that there are some things about healing that can't be reduced to the double-blind RCT. DR. GORDON: Great. Thank you, Tieraona. DR. ORNISH: It is a very simple idea, but it is a very radical one in the sense that even the word "radical" means to get to the root of something, as opposed to literally or figuratively bypassing the problem. As part of that context, is the presumption that the body has a remarkable capacity to begin healing itself if we give it a chance to by addressing whatever the causes are that are causing the illness in the first place. Now, in some places that is going to be diet or exercise or genetic factors, which are often invoked but less often really a causal factor, but it also includes the psychosocial, the emotional, and the spiritual dimensions of health and healing. That is not only on an individual level, but also on a social level. So, for me, there is an opportunity, when we look at suffering or illness, to not just treat those symptoms, not only just the physical symptoms but also the other kinds of symptoms that are often medicated -- certainly, Jim, in your field in psychiatry, we see that a lot. Antidepressants is one very common example -- but to say, what is really going on here, and what can we do to address those issues. Those issues are far-reaching. If we can integrate the best of these traditional and non-traditional approaches, but not simply in the context of what some of the people yesterday were talking about in terms of ginkgo instead of another Alzheimer's drug, or St. John's wort instead of imipramine. In a way, it keeps us in that same mechanistic, mechanical model, and this is the larger picture of how it all fits together. DR. GORDON: Thank you. DR. PAZ: Our psyche has a very big play as far as our physical status. If I just treat what I feel is a medical problem, frequently I lose out on quite a bit because one's emotional state plays such a big role in whether one will improve or not. Some of the therapies that modern medicine addresses doesn't always address that part. I think some of the alternative, actually most of the alternative, therapies treat that as a complete model, and I think we need to really look at that more, facilitate that more with our cultural differences. I think we need to encourage the research and how that works, and support the practitioners that are already doing those kinds of therapies. Some of the examples that we saw yesterday were pretty touching. I think we need to try and be more supportive in folks who are not always doing traditional therapy. I think we need to facilitate the research in that. That is pretty much where I am coming from. DR. GORDON: Great. MS. SCOTT: I agree. I don't know if I can improve upon it. To me, values and principles are very important as a foundation for how you look at the world, and how you act in the world, and how you are in the world. For me, CAM, I think, offers an opportunity for a perspective of wellness as opposed to illness. Holistic in its approach is the integration of physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, and economic, because all of those things are at play when you are dealing with one's wellness. I think we are all in agreement that we want rigorous science. We are all in agreement that we want to have devices and drugs and botanicals, whatever, that is safe and effective. I do get concerned that sometimes suggesting that there needs to be a different way to do something is seen as not wanting to have good science. I think we have to keep making the point that this research paradigm does not always work and that there has to be an openness to change and to doing things differently. We do have to change the paradigm. That doesn't mean we have to throw out everything that has worked, but we have to be willing to look at some different ways of measuring for the safety and the effectiveness. I think it is very important that what CAM brings to the whole field of wellness and health care is validating the person's experience and the practitioner's experience. I think this is what has been missing from medicine. We have been trained to walk into the practitioner's office and give up all of our reality, or be swayed from our reality, to the practitioner's way of looking at it. I think that that is a very core and key part to the partnership in the quest for wellness. The one caution I have is that I think we need to celebrate the things we have in common in being human, but also, and something I think that CAM does, is acknowledge and pay attention to the differences among us, without seeing that as a division. I think that is key. So, safety, effectiveness, availability, equity. DR. GORDON: Great. Thanks, Julia. DR. BERNIER: It is really important to be able to identify agents that are really, really helpful, and distinguish those from agents that aren't helpful. To me, the single most important message that the whole CAM movement has made, and this is really reinforced by reading your elegant book -- no plug -- was that that has really shifted the focus to the patient and away from systems, and away from the health care provider to a substantial degree. I have worked as an oncologist for a substantial part of my life, and I always tried anytime I got a new cancer patient to work with that I made a house call. I did this for two reasons, one of which was probably self- promoting, and that was that I felt that if I could interact with the patient in his or her home, that they would know that I would come if they needed me. They rarely ever called upon me to come. So it was a way of ensuring some privacy, but it also, to me, was a really important bonding that one could witness. To get back to the President's charge, I think that how much of modern-day CAM becomes part of the mainstream of American medicine, American health care, is going to depend, to a significant degree, on how careful the research that is carried out is going to be, and how critical that research is. The better that is, I think the greater the likelihood that we will have sharing of the entire field by a whole host of health care workers. I think this is too good an opportunity to establish the efficacy of a lot of the agents that research is going to be critical for what happens. Thank you. DR. GORDON: Thank you, George. MR. CHAPPELL: I apologize for missing the opening. I see CAM as an opportunity to be part of that world view in which everything is related to each other. Interrelationships versus distinct and separate and isolated realities, which the hierarchical model promotes. In interrelatedness it is webs, it is networks, it is cooperative, collaborative, and it celebrates the gifts of each person, the different gifts of each person. So I see this movement as an opportunity to be part of that way of looking at the world. I think some of the principles are openness, collaboration, particularly openness, open to the new idea, the imagination of the new attempt so that discovery can happen without being stifled by the halls of, just, day-to-day management of different functions. That is how this movement has gotten as far as it has. That is why the term "alternative," I believe, but I also like the term "complementary" because I think it needs to be a complement to the good work that has been gained to date by Western medicine. Other than that, I think safety and efficacy should still be the guiding principles that we need to discover new protocols of understanding effectiveness. Trying to fit this other world view into the protocols and models of the old world view will only frustrate us. So I think we have to be prepared to research and find new ways of establishing effectiveness. DR. GORDON: Great. Thank you, Tom. Effie? DR. CHOW: This is really an opportunity of a lifetime I see. We must make the most of this opportunity, as many of you have spoken about. We must take a look at a new paradigm, perhaps, not discarding the old paradigm. Improving the old paradigm of medicine and health as we have it here. I think we should be creative and be brave, courageous about recommending new things. Even that which seems ridiculous, I think we should look at with open eyes. I am just really thrilled with my fellow commissioners because I sense that is what we have here, people with really openness. Chardin says we are born perfect. In Buddhism, it says we are created perfect, but in harmony with nature. Khayyam says, "We cannot study life and look at cadavers." It is true. The energy is all gone, the Chi is all gone, so how do you study life. Einstein says, "We have our own physician inside each of us," and this is every patient. This is sort of a few of the philosophies, my vision, my world vision, I would like to see followed. We have to look at our past to talk about the future. In 1969 we had the first acupuncture training for physicians at Stanford. Since then, there has been arrests for people using acupuncture. They were arrested for practicing medicine without a license. The lawyer was smart. He said, no one was claiming they were practicing medicine, they were practicing acupuncture. It got thrown out of court. So just a few of my own examples: Hope, she is 20 years cancer-free now, and she is in my book. She was supposed to die in three months. Jane, 10 years in a wheelchair. She is a Grade 1 school teacher. Last September, after three treatments, she taught standing, and she has had her first summer standing. Dorianne, twelve and a half years my senior. The Mayo Clinic, Harvard, Johns Hopkins, said tape your eyes shut. She couldn't close her eyes. She had a stomach-tube feeding. In five days, I got her drinking, and also her eyes closing for the first time, and she is eating. Andre, in Germany, was scheduled for his fifth operation, brain operation, and they called me and said, can you come over. Thursday they called me. Tuesday he was supposed to have an operation. So I said no, I will send energy for you, and they canceled his brain operation. Three MRIs showed that his brain tumor had gone to nothing. There are others, MS, quadriplegics that in two sessions we have got walking. Now, this will blow a lot of people's minds out, but this is happening every day. Miracles like this are happening. Do we call it miracles? I think we need to look at these things, CAM, as miracles. So I end with saying that I believe in the rigors of research, and as Julia said, we need to look at other paradigms and, I think many of you have said, at other paradigms of establishing rigor. My recommendation to the patient -- I don't call them patients, I call them clients because they have the right to choose to live or die. We help them to die, and they die so well that they want to live. This is really a phenomena. They come for their eight hugs a day. My theory is at least eight hugs a day and three bellyaching laughs a day. Most of my clients say, I really come in here just for my eight hugs because I can't get hugs at home. Now, that is a shame. So, anyway, thank you very much. I hope that we will be courageous and really look at a really new world model integrating, as Wayne says, the multicultural, the ethnicity, because systems has helped cultures survive for thousands of years. I think we should use some of those things and not only wait until it undergoes rigorous scientific review. Thank you very much. DR. FAIR: Well, my view of CAM has been shaped, both professionally and personally, professionally since my introduction to this field. I almost have the feeling that I have had blinders on for most of my professional career. While there is no denying the advances of modern medicine, it caused me to reflect on some of the things that I thought were truths. I look back with concern about some of the things we have done. When I was a resident, it was standard operating procedure to give 100 percent oxygen to premature babies. It has been estimated there are 10- or 15,000 children that were blinded by that approach, and yet that was standard therapy at that time. We mentioned yesterday, the autologous bone marrow in women with breast cancer. It is still being done, by the way, and recognizing that despite the cost and toxicity, there is no effect whatsoever. This was also standard therapy. Then on the other side of it, these mind-body therapies that I, like many people, thought was really far out and more or less to be ignored, I am just astonished by some of the observations. We were talking yesterday, some of us, about the recent study in London taxicab drivers showing at the posterior hippocampus, the part of the brain that controls spacial orientation, is larger in taxicab drivers than control -- this is in London, not New York, now. [Laughter.] DR. FAIR: Where it is a real profession. The longer the person drove the taxi, the bigger the posterior hippocampus got. It is the first observation that cognitive functions can actually influence anatomy, which just is phenomenal. So I think that this has been disturbing to my professional balance, if you will, or what I thought about the truths that were taught to me and what I thought I had learned over the years. Now I begin to wonder if we really know what questions to ask to evaluate this. Personally, my introduction to CAM was uninvited. Five years ago, I was diagnosed with colon cancer, and despite four surgeries and a year of chemotherapy, I had a recurrence and at that time began seeking out other options. Thanks to Dean Ornish, and subsequently and Michael Lerner, going out of the common wheel, I really learned a different approach. I always prided myself on being an empathetic physician and truly liked taking care of patients, but I came to learn, through my friends, the distinction between healing and curing, and particularly, almost the mantra of common wheel, the idea of expanding life, even if you can't extend life. As Tieraona mentioned, I think I found there a safe place, which was something I could carry with me in my daily activities. These approaches have added so much to my life that my personal goal now, and I think also the goal of this commission, is to try to bring these approaches, again, as a complement to standard therapy. I don't view this as a replacement. Unlike some of my colleagues, as a patient, I don't think we need a new specialty of CAM physicians. I think what we need to do is to enlighten physicians to the benefits and to bring it into the practice of every physician, you might say getting back to old-fashioned medicine. We can't expect everyone that graduates from medical school to be accomplished in all these areas, so it involves the coordination and cooperation between physicians and CAM practitioners in a way that I think has not been done yet. So that is my personal goal. I have changed my career pattern. I hope, and I really believe, that through the workings of this commission, that we can go a long way toward establishing that new medicine, to quote Jim. DR. FINS: I, too, came from a traditional background in medicine as an internist. In participating with all of us here, I am seeing, increasingly, that there really are two parallel universes, and that both of these universes are motivated by a very strong healing ethos across the continuum. With this in mind, I think what we need to do is to try to promote and develop a new synergism and reciprocity between these two universes and have a sort of reunified field theory, as it were, between these two parts of the continuum to serve the health needs of the American public, because I don't think our patients really are distinguishing where they are receiving care. They know they are receiving care, it is just that we have distinguished where they are receiving care. So I think what we should try to do in our world view as a commission, should be to try to create enduring structures that allow for the promotion and the sustaining of the kind of the dialogue that we are engaging in here, I think, so collaboratively, as Effie suggests, even though we do all have very different backgrounds. Also, I think, secondly, appreciate that these enduring structures really allow and foster the application of the scientific method to evaluate and to assess new and novel therapies. I think that, given the massive biomedical establishment, the scientific method is going to be the coin of the realm, and I think it really needs to be addressed and worked with, but I also would say that we need to look to the social sciences to assist in the assessment of border issues or outcomes and health promotion. Not just science alone but the social sciences together will help promote discovery and knowledge. Fourthly, I think we need to look and understand better those parts of the health universe where there have been successful integration of these two universes and overcome the false dichotomy between these two cultures. I think we heard a little bit about that in the Best Practices that we heard about yesterday. Also, I think, in the world of palliative care and hospice medicine, where people have overcome that dichotomy and there has been successful integration. I think if we do all this, it is obvious that CAM will change, and traditional medicine will change, but the healing arts together will be fostered. I think that should be our legacy, and that should be what we are trying to do. I think that will create not only the articulation of a new world view, but also a tremendous amount of health promotion. So thank you for the opportunity to share that. DR. GORDON: Thank you, Joe. It is wonderful to listen to everybody, and to hear, see, feel everybody's commitment to this mission we have in common. There were a few things I said at the end of our talk with Dr. Straus that are some of the principles, it seems to me, important. They have been pretty well articulated around the table. One has to do with focusing on the uniqueness of each individual and his or her journey through life. The work that we do is not just about healing, treating diseases, promoting health, dealing with illness. Our work is the work of helping people become themselves, be themselves. To me, that is the deepest part of the work we do, the highest form of being a healer. The second point has to do with integration and integrating whatever works. Buddha said, "Truth is what works." In my own life and in my own practice I integrate many healing traditions. I have learned from Chinese medicine, I have learned from Ihrveda [ph], I have learned from Western medicine, I have learned from shamanic healing, I have learned from indigenous practices in the United States. They are all part of what happens when I am in the room with somebody. Whether I am in my office, or in their home, or in an intensive care unit, that is all part of what I am doing. The third perspective is a focus on wellness, health, and especially on education. I think it is really so important to help people help themselves. This seems to me fundamental to what I do. Whether someone has a life- threatening illness, or whether I am working with children in a primary school, I am helping to show them the possibilities for healing themselves, for helping themselves, for being happy, for celebrating life, as well as treating whatever problems they may have. The fourth principle is one of outreach, of connection to other people, whether it is in a practical way of helping young investigators, or people from CAM professions that have been outside the mainstream, or physicians who are trying to enlarge what they are doing and trying to study what they are doing. I think we need not only to reach out ourselves, as we are with this commission, but to encourage all of the government agencies, all of the medical schools, all of the establishment, to really reach out and embrace those who have been left outside and to bring them in, and to share with them our privilege, the benefits that we have accrued and what we know. The other thing that is fundamental to me that is really where I started when I sat down here, is I realize that at our Center for Mind-Body Medicine we have a mission, and our mission is both to create a healing community and a community of healers. I see us here on the Commission as a healing community helping to heal what ails medicine and health care in this country, and also, and it was just brought home to me by listening to everyone as we went around the table, a community of healers working together. So my hope is that, as we work with all the people who come before us, as we ask for their testimony, and as we ask them questions, and as we formulate recommendations for the President and for Congress, and I felt this very strongly yesterday, we are also welcoming them into this circle of healers, and that we understand that we are all engaged, coming from very different points on this circle, which is wonderful to see and hear. We are all engaged in the same work. So it is great to be here. It is great to hear you, great to feel you, see you. Thank you, everybody. We will continue this discussion. Yes, Effie. DR. CHOW: Can we hear from Steve, our executive director? DR. GORDON: I asked Steve, and Steve demurred, but we can certainly hear from him. DR. GROFT: I am really here to provide you with what your needs are. I think the audience and the public needs to hear from you more than it does from me. Okay, just a few thoughts, I guess. I know I haven't given it a lot of thought because of the intricacies of what we have been involved with in just getting the meeting together. I guess my philosophy of life, in dealing with the issues, are, we come into the world and we don't have any control when we come into the world. We are all given different tasks to do. In the last nine years since I have been involved in CAM directly, I think I have tried to create a safe environment, an environment that people could come and present their views in a totally non- confrontational manner, that they could be absorbed into the system and just to be able to talk and to listen and to move ahead, and we are moving ahead. I think we all strive for an inner peace, that we work with our family, our friends, different people at work. We are getting there. It is a struggle when you go against so many organizations or individuals who are threatened by what you would like to see, and what we know is right, and what we know brings us peace. That is very important. I think wellness is so much a part of our own being. Sometimes it is not because of external factors, family and friends and the world around us, but I think we all have to strive for that. I think that is what we are trying to do. That has been, again, the religion, the spirituality part, has been a big part of my life, and I try to stay with it. DR. GORDON: Thank you, Steve. I am also going to ask Michele and Geri and Joe and Doris, if they are here, just to say a couple words as well, because they are part of our team. So thank you, Effie, for asking again after he refused once. Michele? MS. CHANG: Let me time myself here. DR. GORDON: Michele is setting her own timer. MS. CHANG: I think my philosophy and the guiding principles for working with this commission are the same that I have for living life, which is, I believe that we are here to learn, and by learn, to teach, and hopefully, that we will have a lot of fun in doing both. That is what I am here to do. DR. GORDON: That is beautiful. Does somebody want to ask Joe and Doris to come up here, too. MS. POLLEN: I would like to share with everyone the fact that I had a very special father. He was a physician and a biomedical scientist, but he was also a very beloved physician, beloved by his patients. I learned early from him the art of medicine as well as the science. He practiced the art of medicine. I think, as I have been listening to everyone speak, that we lost the art of medicine. That is the really special part of healing, is to be cared for and feel that you are being cared for by your caretakers, by your physician. That was something that my father gave to his patients and always expressed. He also, in the '50s, coauthored a book, probably one of the first, on prevention in medicine. DR. GORDON: Great. Joe, I see you in the back. Would you say a couple of words? MR. KACZMARCZYK: [Off mike.] DR. GORDON: No? Okay. He is our silent partner. Doris, come up, not to put you on the spot at 9:30 in the morning. We have just been going around the room, and everybody has been talking about their vision of CAM and of our work. After Steve first didn't want to say anything, Effie asked him again, and he said okay. So he and Michele and Geri have each said a few words. So to complete this team, I thought that maybe you -- and Joe is here -- that Joe and you could each say a couple of words as well. MS. KINGSBURY: Well, first of all, it is a great pleasure to be on the team working with the commissioners. It is really great. I am learning a lot, good experience. That is it. DR. GORDON: Okay, great. Thank you. MR. KACZMARCZYK: First of all, I don't speak without slides. [Laughter.] MR. KACZMARCZYK: That is an internal joke. I have never really had to articulate my own views about complementary and alternative medicine because I have been, for the last several years, the voice for the nameless, faceless, voiceless people who do not have access. I come from the Bureau of Primary Health Care, the Health Resources and Services Administration, where access is not a buzzword or a mantra. I can tell you that I related to everything that everybody said around the table, but most especially when Julia equity because I think we are at the unique and wonderful intersection of many opportunities. Chief amongst those is to have the opportunity to create an environment that allows access to complementary and alternative therapies for everybody and to have access to a new and better kind of health care delivery system. In addition to that, we are also at the intersection of the opportunity to not only reform health care, but also education. By education, I mean not only medical education, all education. When we talk about education, it should include health care professionals, but also students starting at the youngest possible age. Did I make it, Michele, within the time constraints? DR. GROFT: Next slide, please. [Laughter.] DR. GORDON: One thing I want to just say is that these five people are representatives into the world. They communicate not only the substance of what we want people to come to talk to us about, but the spirit of what this commission is about. So they are us, and we are them. It is great to work with them. DR. JONAS: We couldn't have gotten a better group if we had handpicked them from the world. [Applause.] DR. GORDON: Let's take about a 2-minute break while the first panel comes forward. MS. KERR: Jim? DR. GORDON: Sure, go ahead, Charlotte. MS. KERR: First of all, thank you all for serving us so well. I did want to say this, even in the spirit of our joy as we have shared in this last few minutes. I heard some challenges and some opportunities in the speaking as we spoke, and I wanted to say this. I mentioned a couple of conclusions of possible principles that would be underpinnings, philosophical underpinnings for our work. For example, and this is very important to me, one was that the linear model of cause and effect is only partly applicable to disease and health. When several people spoke around the table, they talked about the need to find the cause for certain problems. To me, I saw a little flashing light. I thought, is it necessary for us to be congruent, perhaps, in our philosophical thinking in order to have a cohesive outcome in CAM? So that was one thing, because that is not exactly how I am thinking, that there is just cause and effect when we do research. The other was, just to mention, as the physicists say, we are probability patterns of interconnectedness. I understand and believe that. If you are hungry in Bosnia, I believe we cannot be full and nourished in Baltimore or in the inner city in Washington. We are connected. When one thinks this way, you immediately, at least in my opinion, are then driven to look at public health issues. If this is a principle we believe in, then this is informing us in the work we must do in CAM. Do you understand what I am saying? I am speaking to my partners here. So I think it is important that we really spend some time in seeing, what are the principles we agree with, because I, frankly, don't know if I do feel we were congruent in our foundation here today, and I think it is pretty important. I understand maybe we are beginning, but I don't have the knowledge to know we are beginning. DR. GORDON: Let me say that I am not looking for congruence. I am just looking for each person right now to express themselves. MS. KERR: Okay. DR. GORDON: We will work. We are going to work and see how we come and where we come. MS. KERR: So this is just the beginning. DR. GORDON: This is just the beginning. We are going to continue this process. DR. JONAS: I think what Charlotte is expressing, and also I have this sense, too, is I do not see, in the process that has been laid out for us, time for us to really fundamentally deal with some of these issues. I would just like to express that. DR. GORDON: You would like to have some more time. DR. JONAS: Yes, absolutely. DR. GORDON: Fine. Actually, that was what Tom proposed. This is the beginning. This is just the introduction. We wanted, in the first time, not to set aside too much time but just to have each person have an opportunity to express him- or herself. We can talk about how much time everyone would like to set aside. That is very much an open question. MS. KERR: Thank you for that. I think that is one need. Then the other is, how do we get on board with one another? One is time, but how are we educating ourselves, perhaps, as a group to see. I mean, we are all doing the best we can, but we also come with different backgrounds. So, Mr. Chairman, I request that we think about that, how we will do it. DR. GORDON: Yes. I think we should think about it. MS. KERR: Thank you. DR. GORDON: Steve? DR. GROFT: I think as we are preparing the future agendas for the meetings, we will factor in some additional time just for thinking and discussing, and open mikes to us, or to you as the Commission members, to be able to talk about things. These initial meetings, I think we felt an urgency to get things moving, that there were so many things to cover. I guess the agenda for these two days was tremendously, probably overly ambitious, to really give you an opportunity to even question the individuals appropriately, but I think that opportunity will come in the future. I think we will have the opportunity for you to talk among each other and just hash things out, where are we. This is all part of the process as we begin to think about the report, and think about the issues. You come together as a group, and I think as you come together and bring all of your differences and similarities, you become one voice, and it does happen in the process of a commission or a committee. You do arrive at that. You don't see that right now, and we don't want you at that point right now. We do want the variability in the statements. Things will start to happen as the second meeting occurs, the third meeting, the fourth meeting, and you spend more time together. It does evolve. I think by the end of the time, we are going to feel that we really don't want to break apart, that you are going to miss the interactions, you are going to miss the individuals. That is when I think we have accomplished the purpose. I think that harmony will come within the group. We may not agree with each other, but I think there will be an acceptance and a harmony that will follow. DR. GORDON: I think it is very important that part of our work is to come together among ourselves, but we are coming together among ourselves with all the people who are coming before us. We don't want to have what is a premature closure of our accounts with reality. So, as a kind of sense of welcoming in the people who are coming, and us evolving our process as well at the time. So we can set aside more time. What we need from you, and maybe we can talk about this a bit later, but that is also going to require more time for participation from everybody here. If there is a willingness to do that, then we can set aside more time. Yes, Effie? DR. CHOW: Just to affirm, I really feel strongly on that, too. I think we should know where we agree, and then respect where we disagree or have different ideas. I think that is what we are chosen for, not everybody thinking the same way, but the diversity that we can come to respect. DR. GORDON: Exactly. Exactly. DR. CHOW: This is how we are going to deal with the bigger vision, too. Thank you. DR. GORDON: Great. Joe, did you want to say something? DR. FINS: I think the agreements and disagreements can be about ends and means. So I think that we probably have a comparable sense of where we want to go and what the end point is, but how we get there and the balance we put on the various opportunities, is, I think, what we will probably have to negotiate and talk about. I think you are absolutely right in bringing this up now. I wrote Steve a note that you need a little bit of dissonance to have a good sense of harmony, otherwise it becomes a Gregorian chant, and we are all singing the same tune, but it is a good tune. DR. JONAS: I think, also, one thing in terms of the means is that we may find as we go around, that we don't have all the skills necessary, sitting around this table, to properly understand or move forward with the means, so we might want to bring individuals, especially in policy- setting, since that is our purpose here, to help with that process. DR. GORDON: Anyone else before we close for now? [No response.] DR. GORDON: Okay, thank you all for this. We will take a couple minutes and then we will come back for the next panel. [Recess.] DR. GORDON: This is Session IX. It is the representatives of the Not-for-Profit Sector. They are going to be talking about support for CAM research. So I want to welcome the four of you here, and thank you very much for responding. One of the things I wanted to say to the commissioners is that the people who have come here, who are coming here, are coming, of necessity, on rather short notice. For this first panel, we only had six or so weeks from the time we planned to the time to ask people. So a lot of people who are here have really made time in their schedules for us. So we appreciate that extra effort you have made as well. So let's begin with Dr. John Templeton from the Templeton Foundation. Session IX: Not-for-Profit Sector Support for CAM Research DR. TEMPLETON: Good morning. I am very grateful for the opportunity to share with the Commission some of the work of the John Templeton Foundation. In particular, I am very pleased to share with you our interest in science-based complementary medicine research, and the application of that research in clinical practice. The foundation is very supportive of the use of the scientific method in the evaluation of spiritual topics. In the case of health and healing in medicine, we are especially supportive of spiritually related approaches to assuring and maintaining good health, as well as contributing to more effective healing when illness occurs. As part of this, we are very interested in the ability of spiritually related complementary medicine to contribute to better health outcomes with significantly greater cost effectiveness. In the last 10 years, there has been a sea change in the growing acceptance of working with the patient's inherent spirituality in the delivery of traditional medical care. When I was in medical school in the 1960s, the two hot issues were honesty and sexuality. The honesty issue concerned the growing recognition of the need to include the patient as an equal member of the patient care team. For example, when dealing with a patient with cancer, the new thesis was that the patient should know his or her diagnosis and as much as possible about that diagnosis, and thereby participate better in choices regarding therapy. In the case of sexuality, it was felt that physicians should be more forthright in discussing sexuality with their patients, especially when these discussions had a bearing on the patient's health and well being. However, at that time, if one ever broached the topic of spirituality, such discussions would have been considered by one's peers as being intrusive and even unprofessional. Since that time, especially in the last 10 years, surveys by Gallup and other groups have given us a new perspective. We have learned from these studies that 70 percent or more patients want their doctors to know about their spirituality perspectives regarding their health. Amazingly, 40 percent or more patients would like their doctors to pray with them. Also, at the same time that we learned of this new level of permission on the part of our own patients, we began to recognize hundreds of scientific studies which showed the positive benefits of spirituality in a patient's life, both in regard to health preservation and recovery from illness. Presently, most of the science-based studies in spirituality and healing are in their infancy, in that most of these studies are correlational, namely that there is a correlation between religious practice and belief and health outcomes. Currently, there are only a few studies that address the issue of the mechanism of action whereby religious practices and belief can affect health outcomes. This is similar to the example of many advances in the history of medicine in which valid correlations were made prior to understanding the underlying mechanisms. For example, the scientific studies that demonstrated that the use of citrus juices could prevent scurvy in sailors were a valid correlational study that preceded the later understanding that the mechanism of action of ascorbic acid. When there is a solid scientific basis for some component that has beneficial impacts, we feel that these components pass into the realm of complementary medicine in which the approach in question can serve as a complement to traditional medicine and surgical therapies. For example, working with a patient's intrinsic religiosity and belief would not replace the beneficial use of medications and/or surgery. Instead, spirituality and/or religion can serve as a positive complement to traditional medicine. Consider these examples of scientific studies in this area. In the 16-year follow-up study in Israel, members of orthodox kibbutzim had 50 percent lower mortality rates than did members of secular kibbutzim for a variety of disease categories, including cardiovascular disease, neoplasm, and external causes. In another study, patients undergoing orthopedic surgery were randomized to receive chaplain intervention visits of 15 minutes per day per patient in the test group. When they were compared with the control group of patients, they had reduced length of stay by 29 percent, and one-third the number of patient-initiated nursing calls, and one-third the use of PRM pain medications. In another study of 248 men addicted to opiate drugs, long-term religiously based therapy produced a 45 percent long-term success rate in abstinence, compared to a 5 percent success rate in the secular-based program. In the area of research-based mechanism of action, there are some early studies which examine psychoneural immunology as a possible explanation for how religion might contribute to good health outcomes. In the study at Duke, frequent religious attendance predicted lower plasma interluken-6 levels in a variety of serious medical conditions. These findings suggest that persons who attend a church frequently have stronger immune systems than less frequent attenders. In order to stimulate high-quality scientific research studies on the impact of spirituality and healing in medicine, the John Templeton Foundation has funded two carefully designed research studies on the efficacy of prayer. The first study assessed the effect of personal, one-on-one, face-to-face prayer therapy in patients with moderate to severe rheumatoid arthritis. Those who were prayed for had a statistically significant decrease in the number of tender and inflamed joints, and a significant increase in joint range of motion and physical mobility. Another study currently underway involves a controlled and randomized multi-institutional evaluation of the efficacy of remote intercessory prayer in 1,800 patients undergoing standard coronary bypass surgery. This study, centered at Harvard Medical School, is due to be completed within the next year. The first question we were asked to consider is, how can the not-for-profit sector stimulate CAM research. There are several possibilities: No. 1, providing seed money to obtain pilot data for larger research grants; No. 2, to support the publishing of research results through book prizes or awards for the best research papers in CAM therapies; No. 3, financial rewards for exemplary courses or research programs in medical schools, or maybe more importantly, during residency, in regard to how to integrate complementary medical practices into traditional medical approaches. Finally, support the convening of consensus conferences to bring together both insiders and outsiders, or skeptics, to discuss existing CAM research and to propose new productive lines of research. Second, we were asked to address some barriers to accomplishing this goal. Number one, we need to address the lack of awareness of the research which already exists or the perception that CAM research is on the fringe. The solution to this problem is the publishing of research results in peer review journals which might normally be skeptical of such studies. A recent example was the publishing of a study in the New England Journal of Medicine showing the efficacy of acupuncture. A second obstacle is a general lack of traditional funding for CAM research. The solution to this problem is improving the methodological rigor of proposed studies. This will help in finding partners in the public and the private sphere. The third obstacle is the need to encourage new researchers in CAM therapies. A solution to this problem is to provide mentors who are well trained in scientific research to guide junior investigators in the designing and conducting of their research. The final question is, how can not-for-profit CAM research be better coordinated with federally supported CAM research. My suggestion in this area is to develop new types of collaborative relationships. This can be done very effectively by convening a jointly funded consensus conference to review in depth the strengths and weaknesses of existing research, and to propose new, well-designed studies to advance the science behind specific CAM therapies. New studies, for example, might seek to elucidate both correlation results and mechanism of action. In addition, they might focus on cost-effectiveness as a means of lowering the overall cost of therapy for the patient. If such research proposals are well designed, they would then lend themselves to increased government grant support. Thank you very much. DR. GORDON: Thank you very much. Next is Dyanne Hayes of the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation. MS. HAYES: Good morning. We at the Hilton Foundation are very honored to be invited to appear before the Commission today, and commend each of you for taking time out of your busy professional lives to serve on this commission. Dr. Chow, before I leave today, I want a hug from you. [Laughter.] MS. HAYES: We come together, hopefully, to create a climate in which CAM research is more appealing in both the public and private sectors. Hopefully, you have had an opportunity to read the brief profile of our recent cocaine alternative treatment study. I know it came in late, but I am going to be referring to it several times in my remarks. I am a foundation executive with more than two decades of experience. I work closely with organizations throughout the world, each seeking to alleviate human suffering. Thus, I understand very clearly the challenges in competition for grant dollars, and the tension that often occurs when grant awards are determined. If our diligence proves that all things are equal, who is to say a substance abuse program deserves funding rather than a project to eliminate preventable blindness. I believe the federal government faces similar challenges, and that is what brings us together today. How do we step up to the plate and increase our attention on CAM research which hopefully translates to increased support? As a non-scientific person, I will share with you some perceptions that help guide me in my response to the three questions the Commission has posed to us. First, CAM research seems to be the stepchild of the National Institutes of Health. Perhaps, I am being very impolite to my host when I wonder whether the NIH is attempting to pass on the bulk of this very important responsibility to the private sector. Second, as complementary and alternative products and practices continue to increasingly become more acceptable throughout mainstream America, coupled together with our improvement in attitudes among individuals, health care professionals, and reimbursement entities regarding wellness and prevention, many of us incorporate one or more of what are called complementary and alternative into our lives, whether it is acupuncture, nutritional and vitamin supplements, herbalists, natural products that range from soap, dietary products and beverages to pet food, and even landscaping materials. Speaking for myself, frankly, I have been more influenced in my choices by family and friends than scientific data. Perhaps, I thereby increase a risk to my wellness. Who knows? I suppose that is why we must have more data disseminated. I am certain most of you have read this week's article in Time Magazine regarding the supposed dangers of mixing herbal supplements and anesthesiology. Just how are we going to make these informed choices? Which begs the question, is the amount of research currently devoted to CAM, at a minimum, in reasonable proportion to its widespread use? My last perception, correct or not, deal with what it must be like working with the federal government and/or a private foundation. Some quarters believe that government and philanthropy have very distinct, separate roles and should always maintain a distance. There are those that are quick to label foundations as standoffish and arrogant, and probably in some instances, these labels are correct. Yet, I believe that if we generalize, continue to unfairly generalize, that this will inhibit many possible good partnerships. Among my foundation colleagues I have heard that working with the government can be messy, unpredictable, and responsiveness is hardly a priority. The first question, and I will incorporate what I think a role for the government might be. First, for the government, it is about communication. Believe me, Dr. Templeton and I have never met before this panel this morning, but I am going to echo many of his remarks. First, begin with hosting introductory face-to- face meetings and site visits among foundation people with representatives of existing centers currently funded by the NIH doing CAM research. This provides an informative glimpse of what is on the cutting edge of CAM research. We who are interested in and open to the idea of CAM research then have an opportunity to learn, discover what the needs are, and get ideas in which they and we might work together. At these meetings, use the opportunity to inform foundation people how one actually navigates the federal grant process. Second, be more aggressive in seeking opportunities for foundation representatives to participate on panels such as this to discuss their experiences and perceptions regarding CAM and CAM research. Third, at a minimum, get these foundation people on your mailing lists, publicize the heck out of those grants that do or have had public/private funding support. Let us not be shy about celebrating our accomplishments or reluctant to discuss our challenges, because both are going to frame how we are going to go forward. Ways in which the foundation world might stimulate CAM research. First, I would like to see foundations be more willing to fund small pilot projects. I have been told that government dollars for CAM research are becoming increasingly hard to get without pilot data. Yet, the adequate funds -- and I am told this about $100,000 -- to do this are very scarce. $100,000 grant over two years seems very reasonable for a credible pilot study. For the type of foundation that has an interest in this, it should be doable. Second, foundations interested in CAM research might themselves create a pooled fund of monies and announce the competition for projects up to so many dollars. The collaborative would set up a scientific advisory board of reputable scientists knowledgeable in the area in which the proposals are being submitted. This is done regularly among foundations. We do this often when we are doing urban renewal projects. This willingness to co-fund helps diminish the risk factor of being the sole donor. Many foundation trustees, including ours, and particularly those non- corporate foundations, are more favorably impressed when we can point to the fact that our resources can be leveraged. Additionally, when you have a mixed set of funding partners involved, if a project falters as some do, there is a safety net in place of smart, invested persons poised to intervene and determined to succeed. The second question deals with the obstacles and barriers. I believe the fundamental obstacle we face is the difference or sense of separation between two cultures, Eastern and Western medicine. For example, the idea of a blinded, randomized, placebo-controlled trial, the gold standard in Western medicine, is often not acceptable with practitioners of Eastern medicine. Our colleague at the Lincoln Clinic at the Bronx, New York, Dr. Michael Smith, and to whom I refer in the paper you have describing our grant, refused Lincoln as a site for our study because he and his staff feel, very passionately, that it is irresponsible to allow a sham or a placebo acupuncture condition for their client. Three other obstacles are, and they address the lack of information or knowledge-sharing that helps to breed misinformation and mistrust between government and foundation staff. First, is the dissemination of data. It seems to take forever for NIH to digest data and have it available for public consumption. Some responsibility may lie with the researchers and report writers themselves. So I believe they need to apply some pressure to mop up and finish their reports. This is a critical part of the necessity to build bridges between those two sectors, disseminating data. To expand further on the information- sharing point, during the time when our study was being designed, we and the site investigators learned after the fact that there had been several very good acupuncture symposia going on. These would have been very helpful to us. Also, letting the foundation world know what has already been funded. Last but not least, foundations themselves need to do a better job communicating its funding interests to each other and to the government. Of course, sharing whatever existing data we have regarding any CAM-related research that we funded. We, the foundations, should be a convener and broker of information as well. This applies not only to our external constituencies, but internally as well among our own staff and trustees. We need to send the signal that we are willing to deal with the largest funder of health services there is, the federal government. The last question, how can the two sectors better coordinate CAM research. My answer to this in some ways reflects my earlier response to the previous questions. First, the subject of timing. If we really are going to attempt an increased number of jointly funded research projects, then both sectors have to assess how to be more flexible regarding timing of proposal submittals. My experience with our study was that we gave Dr. Klieber [ph] one year to match our grant or risk losing it. He and I both scoured the foundation world diligently to get this match. He gets the prize for the most rejections, 15. By then, months had passed as well as two of the three deadlines that year for submitting grant proposals to the government. Even if Dr. Klieber had met one of the deadlines, I understand that an application review takes four to five months, and then the investigator doesn't learn what his priority score or comments are for another two months. That is more than half a year. Plus, if most applications aren't funded the first time around, it takes nearly two years from the date of submission and resubmission to get funded. Perhaps for CAM research the review committees will rethink the scoring system and make the process less tedious and time-consuming. Thus, it really was very unrealistic for the Hilton Foundation to expect a match for our grant, especially for CAM research, that it could happen in one year. No wonder scientists are less than enthusiastic when offered private sector support with this type of contingency. In closing, I believe sincerely that both the public and private sectors seek solutions that are practical but effective, inexpensive, transferrable, and reliable. We both want to demonstrate that we care about protecting consumers against dubiously effective, substandard or counterfeit practices, and thereby minimizing health risks for populations worldwide. Thank you. DR. GORDON: Thank you very much. Dr. Daniel Callahan from Hastings Center. DR. CALLAHAN: I should say first, unlike my distinguished colleagues, we are on the receiving end of grants rather than providing grants. So I come with a somewhat different perspective, but I would like to talk about what I think the nonprofit sector can bring to this general discussion. I really got interested in the subject a few years ago when I began noticing an uncommon degree of hostility among a number of distinguished physicians toward CAM, and I began asking myself, why is this hostility there. It is obvious from surveys that a large number of people use it, actually a large number of educated people. Why is it? I have come to think that probably the greatest obstacle to getting more research and better research is that remaining hostility. Not only has that discouraged people from looking at the subject -- it has discouraged many good researchers -- but there is a tendency, even once the research in underway, not to take it very seriously. So I think one major problem is somehow finding a way to work better with, I will call it, the medical establishment, whether you call it the reductionistic medical establishment, the dualistic medical establishment, but yes, Virginia, there is a medical establishment and it has its lay supporters. Leon Jaroff [ph], a long-time writer for Time Magazine, predicted recently in an issue of Time Magazine -- it was an issue devoted to the future of medicine -- and one of his predictions was that within the next 30 or 40 years, alternative and complementary medicine will have been thoroughly debunked and removed from the scene. If you read the magazine reason, and there are few others, you will find quite a great deal of hostility. I think that, to me, is one of the major obstacles, how to give it a higher status, give it a stronger reputation, and bring in people from the middle range of medicine, if you will, who could make a contribution. Having said that, I would also add, I think one of the difficulties created by this situation is it has forced many researchers in CAM to play on somebody else's turf, if you will. I certainly believe it is important to look at safety and efficacy issues, but I don't think that would have become the most important issues if it were not the main medical establishment saying, by god, if you want us to accept you, here are our rules and you show you can play by those rules. It seems to me, that is a kind of a trap. The question is, while taking that view seriously, not let that dominate it as the model of what counts as good research. Well, in any case, let me suggest four areas of research I think are important. First, obviously, is safety and efficacy. Enough has been said about that and the need for good scientific research, so I will say it no more. I think it is important also to ask the question, what does the public interest in CAM say about the general attitude of Americans toward health care in this country? What does it say about what they are not getting, or what they feel they are not getting? What they feel they need in addition to what they are getting, and how can we better make sense of that? Most of the people I know interested in CAM, it is for them an alternative. They do both. They usually turn to CAM when other things don't work, and typically with chronic illness. But I don't think we really understand the social dynamic, much less the medical dynamic of chronic illness well enough. It seems to me, research on why people are drawn to it, what people who are drawn to it, what do they mean by what we say works, or what do they find satisfying about it that they don't find satisfying in the rest of medicine. Here a good deal of social science research would be very helpful, cultural research as to what makes people think about it the way they do think about it. It is pretty clear for many people that the fact that personal interaction is a key element. This is constantly talked about in mainline medicines, the need for better communication. We have a project at Hastings on communication in cancer, but it is fairly clear that it is a problem and perhaps exacerbated by managed care. But even without managed care, it has always been a problem. We have to understand why that is the case. Why is it that it is so difficult to get people simply talking with each other in health care? CAM, it seems to me, has some insights to offer in that respect. Thirdly, I think the issue of medicine as art and medicine as science, an ancient issue, remains an important and fascinating one. It seems to me, when we think about it, it is really interesting paradox or puzzle that over the past 10, 15 years, not only has evidenced-based medicine come to the fore, namely that we need more and better scientific medicine, but at the same time CAM has come to the fore. We have got these two parallel things going on. I have been increasingly impressed by the limits of evidence-based medicine. First of all, very expensive to do. An awful lot of conventional medicine will never be properly tested. On occasion, of course, when it is tested, it is tested, often, by pharmaceutical companies who have got something to benefit. So there is a certain suspicion, anyway. Surely, the federal government is never going to put up the billions of dollars necessary to really review everything. So it can't be done in any very total fashion. Secondly, the results you will get are probabilistic results. It doesn't tell you what to do with any individual patient. It tells what on the whole might work some of the time with some of patients under certain circumstances, which means that the relevance of medicine as an art is still as much alive as ever. If you get the evidence, you get the probabilities, you have the ethical questions of, well, should you spend the money doing something that may have a low probability, might work with some people but not for others; how should you think about individual patients in the light of population statistics. As far as I am concerned, the interaction between science and the art of medicine is going to be a persistent part of medicine in the future, regardless of how much evidence-based medicine there will be, and there will never be enough of it. Finally, I think CAM is helpful in trying to envision what we think of as the future of medicine. My main work is in the area of health policy. I am interested in the future of our health care system. This is an excessively grandiose generalization, but I think we face two large problems. One, the obvious aging of societies, the larger and larger number of elderly people, many of whom are going to have chronic illness. On the other hand, we also have a great problem of how to educate a younger generation to stay well so that when they become elderly they will not become chronically ill people, but they will get through a long life in pretty good health. Here, the idea of compression of morbidity, I think, is alive and well, and worth pursuing. For this reason, I think CAM not only offers the possibility of dealing better with the aging population, but also of enabling younger people to better take care of themselves, better understand their own health, and thus, reduce our, at present, I think, excessive dependence on high technology medicine to bail us out and rescue us after we have lived unhealthy lives, or one thing or another has gone wrong. I don't think we can continue on that route with an aging population. So in my mind, a sustainable medicine is going to require a CAM as a fundamental part of its future because the present biomedical model, I don't think, is a sustainable model for the future of medicine, either economically, or for that matter in terms of improving health. So with that, I will stop. Thank you. DR. GORDON: Thank you very much. Next is Ms. Teri Ades from the American Cancer Society. MS. ADES: Thank you. I would like to thank the Commission and Dr. Gordon for the invitation for the American Cancer Society to speak to you today. The American Cancer Society is the nationwide, community-based, voluntary help organization dedicated to eliminating cancer as a major health problem. Because we are community-based organization, we touch millions of people's lives everyday. My comments today, just to share with you, will be related to cancer and complementary and alternative medicine. We realize that there are many definitions of complementary and alternative medicine, and I would like to share with you what our definitions are so that we can realize that we may all have differences in how we define these words. "Alternative," to us, means a treatment that is used in the place of a mainstream treatment. It may be a disproved treatment or one that hasn't been proved to be effective. Complementary methods are those that are defined as used in addition to a mainstream treatment. These do not replace mainstream treatment, and they are not promoted to cure or treat cancer. Rather, they control symptoms and improve the quality of life of the person. This distinction separates the methods based on how they are used. Any one therapy could fall into either category, depending on how it is used. I share this with you because the lack of consistent definitions has created much confusion to the public, and for professionals, studies published in medical journals cannot be adequately analyzed, nor can they be compared with other studies because of the differences in our terminology. We do not believe that alternative and complementary therapies are the same, and should not be grouped as one. I raise this because if the body of knowledge is to grow, we must speak with one language. We are sensitive to the growing public interest, in particular those living with cancer with regard to alternative and complementary medicine. We also acknowledge that more research is needed regarding the safety and efficacy as has been mentioned previously, and we advocate for peer-reviewed scientific evidence. We believe that all cancer interventions must withstand the scrutiny of peer-reviewed scientific evaluation before they can be recommended for the prevention or treatment of cancer. We also realize the need to balance access to alternative and complementary medicine while protecting patients against those therapies that might be harmful to them. We support patient access, but strongly encourage more oversight and accountability by governmental, public, and private entities to protect the public. We believe cancer is a little bit different from some of the other chronic illnesses. The reason we do is that many cancers today can be cured if the disease is diagnosed early, and if the treatment is started, and if the treatment is the treatment that is effective for that cancer. If there is a delay in diagnosis or treatment for whatever reason, then the chances of that cure may be lost. The potential drug interactions in people with cancer can occur, and they must be recognized. Now, to address the questions that I was asked to address, the first one: How can the public/private sector stimulate complementary and alternative medicine research? I think you have a handout from us that does describe our current research in the area of complementary and alternative medicine. I wasn't asked to address that, but I do want to call your attention to that. I would like to revise the question that we were asked and address: How can the public/private sector facilitate professional participation in current funding opportunities? The American Cancer Society does support the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine. The initial statements of Dr. Straus, we have found, are very encouraging regarding the importance of the systematic and scientific approach to studying various medicines. The Center has good funding, and we hope that the Commission will support the Center's efforts. A second important component of existing opportunities for research is the NCI's Best Case Studies. I believe you heard about that yesterday. This gives clinicians who may not have the research background an opportunity to learn how to conduct their study using a scientific method. We encourage this group and others to support this program, to provide the necessary mentoring and coaching that clinicians need to successfully complete their research and to publish their findings. We currently have in place the opportunities for research funding for people with cancer through our government agencies. More money may be needed to be able to mentor and coach more of those who have therapies that want further study, and if that is the case, that we ask the Commission to recommend additional funding. We believe that successful mentoring will be the impetus for others to follow. The second question: What are the obstacles, barriers and possible solutions to accomplishing this goal? For example, the use of incentives. What we see as the primary barriers to more research in this area are attitudes and perceptions. Money may be an additional factor, as mentioned previously. Obviously, good research costs money, and money will attract those who are considering further study. We believe the major barriers lie in people's attitudes, and perceptions had been mentioned previously. For example, some believe that the randomized clinical trial cannot be done with some of the complementary and alternative therapies. My question is, is that fact? If it is, then we do need to identify those types of research that can be used. We are beginning to see more research published in some of the major medical journals, such as the New England Journal of Medicine, the British Medical Journal, and JAMA. We need to see more published research. For others, the lack of scientific proof for years in the past, and still today, causes trust issues, which divide people into the "we" and "them." We must move beyond this to a comfort level that allows everyone to agree that safety and efficacy are essential. Rather than considering incentives, we ask the Commission to consider setting the expectation that all therapies must be proved to be safe and effective so the public does not have to question their therapy. We also encourage an educational strategy, one that will identify and teach the research methods that are necessary to study this area, to offer mentoring, to support the researchers through the process ending with a publication, and to help in breaking down the barriers that I have addressed previously. No. 3: How can the public/private sector be better coordinated with federally supported CAM research? We have no really good model for this, but we believe a model could be established with the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine as the coordinator of the group. We would like to see the public, private, and governmental agencies together discussing how this might work. We have also seen how quickly such cancer centers as Fox-Chase, Memorial Sloan-Kettering, Dana-Farber, and others, have developed their integrated medicine programs to offer complementary therapies along with their mainstream treatments. These programs offer the patient the study population needed, and the investigators clinicians to conduct the studies in a coordinated approach to CAM research. So the summarize my comments, we do support evidence-based scientific research to prove the safety and efficacy of new promising therapies. We do support the right of patients to expect that what they receive is safe and effective. We do support the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine, and the NCI's research agenda as well. We support the Center's coordination of CAM research involving all agencies, federal, private, public. We ask that the cancer centers' integrated medicine programs be considered a valuable resource. We support existing federal funding opportunities, and support an educational strategy, as I have mentioned previously. Thank you. DR. GORDON: Thank you very much. Thank you all four for your complementary perspectives. Dean? DR. ORNISH: First of all, I am sure that I am speaking for everyone here to say how much we appreciate your being here, and how fascinated I personally am by what each of you had to say. As Jim was saying, it really does complement. I have just one question for each of you, if I can be brief. For Dr. Templeton, in the pioneering work that your foundation is funding, are you distinguishing between what some would categorize as religion versus spirituality, the idea that religion sometimes divides and spirituality looks for commonality? In many systems of healing, the very fact of dividing itself, may predispose to suffering an illness, and the very fact of finding common ground leads to healing. I am just wondering if you make those distinctions. DR. TEMPLETON: The problem of designing good studies is difficult when you have a harder time defining an item that you are studying and be able to measure it in particular. If you deal with religion or religious practice, you could certainly assess people's attendance or practices, whether those are prayers or devotions or any kind of overt activity which you could quantify. I think that has been the big weakness in studying the broader issue of spirituality from a scientific perspective because people seem to have different perceptions of what their spirituality is, compared to someone else. DR. ORNISH: Right. DR. TEMPLETON: So that why I say this kind of research is very much in its infancy. DR. ORNISH: Although, when you have relatively crude measures, and yet find dramatic differences, then you have to figure there is something going on there. DR. TEMPLETON: Yes, I agree. That is, again, why I say that I think much of the early assessments will be correlational, and then you may, hopefully, in time, be able to understand better why they have that effect. But yes, I think it is important to try and pick some aspect of spirituality that a group that practices a certain type of spirituality approaches maybe will say, this is what we are about when we say that, and then study their intervention. DR. ORNISH: Some orthodox groups, they may distinguish themselves from other groups, but at least within that group there is a greater sense of cohesiveness. So it is even harder to tease those things out. DR. TEMPLETON: Right. DR. ORNISH: Thank you. And then, for the Hilton Foundation, I understand you have no investigator-initiated grants. It is all foundation-initiated. Are you doing anything in CAM? I mean, you have talked about the cocaine study, but in a broader sense, are you planning any initiatives in CAM? MS. HAYES: Nothing is in the works at this time. This particular study, it really has been six years. We expected a three-year time frame. Now, the Hilton Foundation does like to commit its resources long-term, but this took much longer than we had hoped. However, our board is very eager to get the results, and Dr. Klieber tells me they will be here next month. Regardless of what the results are, I think for a board as traditional and conservative as ours, it was a giant step forward for them and we have been very pleased with the organization that we funded, the Center for Addiction and Substance Abuse, CASA, and Dr. Klieber, in particular. And so, I would hope that the board would continue to be open if we bring something to it, because we are a foundation where unsolicited proposals are not funded. We look for niches that aren't being funded or aren't particularly popular. DR. ORNISH: Thank you. Dr. Callahan, I was particularly fascinated about what you were you saying about the limitations of evidence- based medicine. I used to get the Hastings Report when I was in medical school, and it was one of the only things of its kind at the time. So I really appreciate what you did then, too. One of the things that we found in doing randomized, controlled trials, is that there has to be a certain narrow window in time. There has to be enough evidence to justify doing it, but not so much that a control group would be unethical. If you have a new drug or a new device, that is less of an issue, but in CAM, by nature of the fact that so many therapies have been around for thousands of years, they wouldn't be around for thousands of years if there wasn't some evidence that they did some good. How can you do randomized, controlled trials? We find this all the time in our work. When someone gets randomly assigned to the control group, they feel bad, and we feel bad. We justify it by saying, well, it is the higher purpose of, you really need to do this to get that sense of rigor, and yet. As an ethicist, what is your opinion? Is it ethical to do randomized, controlled trials of CAM therapies if there is enough evidence that there is some benefit, that they have been around as long as they have been? DR. CALLAHAN: Whether it is ethical or not. I guess the question is, there will be circumstances where you really can't do randomized clinical trials. You are going to have find some alternative method. It simply won't even be practically possible. Then I guess the question is, do you have enough confidence in those other methods that you feel reasonably certain that there will be no harm to the patients, that you will really get good evidence, that the results will allow you to say yes or no or maybe about something. So it seems to me, the question is really the adequacy of the other methods of evaluation if you can't use the randomized clinical trials. It seems to me, an enormous need in this field is to find some better ways of formalizing alternative means of investigation. Interestingly, this issue came up in arguments about doing AIDS research in Africa were many object to doing placebo studies, which is a standard part of the technique. It is just in certain circumstances, that does not seem ethically appropriate. So the thing is, what then is, if not equally good method, what is a very good second- best method. I gather CAM has really got a problem articulating some, if you will, competitive research models that seem to have the power of the randomized clinical trials. DR. ORNISH: Just as a follow-up, it even goes beyond just adequate other methods, because we found, for example, in our earlier studies with looking at CAM approaches and reversing heart disease -- ideally, in a randomized trial, you have to complete testing of someone, and then you randomize, but in the process of testing them, people develop such a positive expectation, despite our best efforts, that if they were randomly assigned to the control group, they would get angina. One guy called me at 4:00 in the morning from the coronary care unit saying, I got so disappointed when I got the control group, I got unstable angina, and I am up, and I want you to be up, too. [Laughter.] DR. ORNISH: Then, of course, it introduces all kinds of confounding problems because then they are more likely to change because you told them exactly what you are doing. They are more likely to drop out because they are angry they ended up in the control group, even though you disclosed at the beginning exactly what the odds are. So there are certain issues that are inherent, almost, in many of the CAM studies that you don't find in drug trials. I am wondering, as an ethicist, putting aside, can you get good enough data, is it really ethical to do these kind of designs? What we ended up doing was modifying our design to an invitational design where we would randomize people before we conducted them. So we had less contamination, cross-over, drop-out, people getting upset, and so on, just to make myself more ethically comfortable, but I think also it gives better science. Do you address these issues at all in the Hastings Center? DR. CALLAHAN: We have not. We have actually done a lot of work with human subject research generally, but we haven't particularly looked at CAM research as a special subcategory. I guess my sense is that if you can't do what is considered the gold standard, as they say, and nonetheless it is important to test in some fashion, then it is perfectly all right, I think, to pick some, perhaps, less satisfactory method if it is the only one available to use. It seems to me, this is sheer necessity. Better something that you consider not quite ideal than doing nothing at all and letting things just continue wandering about, as they probably will, if you don't do the test. DR. ORNISH: Thanks. My last question, which is brief, is, is the American Cancer Society doing any CAM initiatives, any CAM funding? I wasn't able to find it. In particular, are you doing any kind of partnerships with the National Center for CAM? MS. ADES: In terms of our research, we have three different areas of research, and we have activities related to complementary and alternative medicine in all three areas. Our Behavioral Research Center, which, we conduct our own research. Two previous studies that they have done was the frequency of use of CAM among cancer survivors. Then the second one that was done was professional perceptions of the use of CAM. The one that is currently going on right now is the frequency and impact of the quality of life of breast cancer survivors who are using complementary and alternative medicine. Our Epidemiology and Surveillance Department, of course, has their ongoing cancer prevention studies 1 and 2, started in '59. They are following 100,000 people. A component of that is certainly nutrition, their nutritional habits. That will include vitamins, minerals, nutritional supplements, and so on. In terms of our extramural grants program, I looked quickly through to find some of the grants that we currently are funding, and those include the use of presurgery hypnosis, effect on post-surgery recovery of breast cancer patients, the use of hypericin from St. John's wort to treat tumors of the pancreas, the use of Vitamins A and D for biologic modulation chemotherapy of advanced breast and prostate cancers, and the applications of acupuncture for pain management. Those were, just quickly, four that I pulled out. DR. ORNISH: Thank you. DR. GORDON: Wayne, Charlotte, Joe, and Tom. Let me just say to everybody that we need a little concision, too, because we are going to be running way over time. DR. JONAS: Thank you very much for the list because that was my question, also, as to what was actually being funded by the ACS in these areas. It sounds like most of them are in complementary areas, and so an important perspective. I just wanted to follow a little bit up on the methodological discussion that was had, and just point a different dilemma, and we don't need to go into the details, but I appreciate any kind of thoughts on that perhaps you could deliver to us. To me, I see almost an insolvable dilemma of being able to address the need of new methodologies from the perspective of complementary and alternative medicine. It is almost like saying, well, I want to test this untested area, and I am also going to use an uncertain measurement technique. You don't combine both of those. It is very clear that the randomized, controlled trial, as you have mentioned, is not adequate for everything, but it is unclear as to what else can provide you with equally valid information. So we don't really have a substitute at this point. I am not sure that complementary medicine can do that. It is the responsibility, really, of the mainstream scientific community to try to figure that out. I am wondering if there are some ways in which we can facilitate that, even though it is not directly on complementary medicine. If there are ways in which some of the work that you are doing, Daniel, could assist, or if you perceive ways that the Commission itself could facilitate them. DR. CALLAHAN: Well, you may remember from our project, I found one of the things in a project at the Hastings Center was to bring in some people who were experts in the philosophy of science. They weren't experts in CAM. DR. JONAS: Exactly. DR. CALLAHAN: It seems to me, it would be a valuable little project to find some people who were interested in scientific methodologies who look at different fields, because one thing is pretty clear, there is no such thing as one single scientific method. Biomedical fields use different methods of research to bring together a group of scientists to talk about the development of some alternatives which might be appropriate. If you can't use randomized clinical trials, are there perhaps some models that research in other fields that you could borrow from, or adapt, or modify that might work here? DR. JONAS: Should that be more of a foundation or a think tank effort? DR. CALLAHAN: No. I think it has to be a think tank. It seems to me, a grant to bring together some research methodologists to talk about this issue, and to bring in not just people interested in CAM, but to bring in someone who will find this a fascinating methodological problem would be a valuable exercise and very helpful, and probably not expensive. People like that come rather inexpensive. No machines, no nothing, just real cheap stuff. DR. JONAS: Just brains, billions of years of investment. I had a couple questions, well, one question, really, for the Foundation. I would love to get your comments in writing, the succinct recommendations that you had. I didn't see all of those in here. I think they were excellent, both of you, in terms of some ways to facilitate the private investment and the kinds of things that you are looking for in these areas. I had one question for Dr. Templeton. There considerable interest in spirituality now, really, in all sectors, both the government and the private. The NIH currently has a working group that I help facilitate, and it is ongoing now. It is cross-institutional, to look at spirituality in health areas. Rockefeller has funded now a project to pull together the science in spirituality as well as energy healing and distant things. Some of what you are doing kind of overlaps that, the distant-healing study that you mentioned looks at non-local issues in some regard. The spirituality observational epidemiological studies are looking more at the traditional religious and spirituality practices. I guess, from your perspective, I would be interested to know, are there ways to kind of bring these things together? Do we just allow them to spontaneously come together? Is there a way that there can be a bridging the Commission might help facilitate or suggest in that area? What would be needed in that, from your foundation's perspective? DR. TEMPLETON: We are young foundation, and we are very early in the area of supporting individual research. We were impressed with the quality of the two studies that I mentioned, which is why we supported them. I think that we are great believers in the importance, as has been suggested, of consensus effort to bring together, whether it is on the ethical or scientific design aspect, or on the feasibility of addressing a structured study on any kind of intervention. For us, it would be in the area of spirituality. We agree, going back to the earlier question, that spirituality as a more general concept, is something that needs to be addressed because most of the science has been things that were more behavior-related in the area of religion. So I think a consensus conference could be very helpful in suggesting the ways to study this. DR. JONAS: Have you done things, for example, with one of the NIH institutes in the past in some kind of collaborative meeting or a conference? Has that been something that has occurred? DR. TEMPLETON: No, we haven't. So I think we would be interested in some sort of collaborative effort in our area of interest. I thought these presentations were being transcribed. Am I mistaken? DR. GORDON: They are. They are being transcribed. DR. JONAS: Oh, okay. So we will get that, then. Thank you. DR. GORDON: Thank you very much. Charlotte? MS. KERR: Dr. Callahan, in your report here, you speak of the conclusions of the research group. We have already talked about it a bit, but the third one, "There is no single, all-purpose, scientific methodology suitable for CAM; and "The need to determine the methodologies are most appropriate for evaluating CAM. Wayne has already highlighted this. Also, yesterday the founder of Bastyr suggested that we have a consensus conference on research protocols. I wondered what you thought about that. I think I have some understanding from what you just said to Wayne. I often feel when we are listening to people and scientists speak to us, and even amongst ourselves on the Commission, that we say, well, we need rigorous scientific study, and it seems to be an ipso facto kind of, we have got it all down and we know what we should be doing. To me, it is almost a fundamental starting point. I have a question about that, which of course, is what your research group is reporting. I am wondering, in addition to anything further to say about the way to pursue doing this, a consensus conference, a think tank, what did you find in your research group? Did you find that the world view, the new scientific thinking, is what is creating the question in terms of research methodologies to be used for CAM? DR. CALLAHAN: Well, if I understand your question, what seemed clearly evident is that there is a view out there that there is a single type of scientific methodology which is the scientific methodology. It seemed pretty clear to us, first of all, that there isn't. There are many scientific methodologies. Secondly, that CAM, given the whole range of things that are covered by that territory, I think to evaluate spirituality is very different from evaluating herbs. You can do a pretty clean study of efficacy, but spirituality, even if you know that there is a correlation, it is not clear what you would do with it exactly. There are different implications and consequences of even the findings in the practice of medicine than there are in the use of herbal supplements. So it seems to me, what we really need is, probably, look at the whole field and decide what are the main types of issues and what are the appropriate methodologies, and to move away from the idea that there is one, and only one, scientific methodology which is all- purpose, valid for any and all purposes. DR. TEMPLETON: Just on the question of spirituality or religion, that sort of thing, I think there are new openings, such as in the training of medical students, and perhaps residents, to understand that it is appropriate to take a spiritual or religious history. You can do that fairly quickly, in two or 3 minutes, which may or may not open doors that will be very meaningful to that patient as they face their illness or their health problem. So I think that there are some new approaches that can bring these spiritual or religious-based sensitivities into the mainstream. DR. GORDON: Thank you. Joe. DR. FINS: I just want to endorse the notion of really looking at methodology as an important issue. I think Wayne is absolutely right, we can have new therapies and new methodologies coexisting. We have to foster the development of new methodologies, but this is an old question about -- viability. This was a question for psychoanalysis. Freud had the same problem. So this is an old, ancient question that we will have to address as well. I want to also add to the issues, and I think Dan mentioned this, the issue that this is really a public phenomenon, and resonate with what Dean said about the difficulty of saying no. I would also expand to the psychodynamic aspects of being an investigator in CAM, being marginalized, perhaps, by your traditional peers and finding a tremendous resonance with your patients, and whether that phenomenon is different than a conventional investigator who is handling chemotherapy and can't enroll another patient because the funding has run out or they have accrued the number of patients necessary. So the sociology of the investigator as well as the phenomenon. I have a really concrete question, just to add to this session, for Ms. Hayes and Dr. Templeton. We heard yesterday that some of the investigators, because of the marginalization, are not affiliated with institutions or with not-for-profits. There are for-profit practitioners who may not qualify for the 501(c)(3) issue. I am just wondering how a not-for-profit foundation could support people who don't have their own infrastructure, and what kind of suggestions both of you might make to foster that as an outreach. MS. HAYES: It is not illegal for a foundation to make a grant to an individual. It just requires that the foundation bear the responsibility. We call it expenditure responsibility. It demands more staff time and a willingness on the foundation to do that, because many times we fund organization that aren't U.S.-based. We have to be willing to take that grant. It just requires some additional due diligence up front and so forth. Unfortunately, the Hilton Foundation rarely will fund an individual. I can't think of an instance that we have in our history, but we do fund organizations that are not 501(c)(3). DR. TEMPLETON: I agree exactly with What Dyanne said. As a new foundation and in pushing some frontiers that are not generally picked up by a lot of other foundations, we are more flexible in resorting to expenditure responsibilities when we think someone's undertaking is really worth supporting. We don't do it commonly, but we are much more open to it. DR. FINS: But if we want to generalize it, and have foundations that are, perhaps, less enamored with this new evolving area of funding. Are there recommendations that you might perhaps mention now or send to us, changes in the law, in the not- for-profit law, that might help to encourage greater outreach on the part of foundations that, maybe, do not want to take this additional set of responsibilities on? Maybe you can supply that to the Commission, because we could make those recommendations downstream. DR. GORDON: Anyone else want to respond? Tom. MR. CHAPPELL: Dr. Templeton, thank you for your presentation. I was curious, as you were speaking about spirituality as a complement to traditional medicine, whether you have explored 12-step therapy, recovery therapy, in any one of the addictions as an efficacious complement for health. DR. TEMPLETON: We haven't done it. We try, because our funding is to some extent limited, to find cutting-edge research that has not been done before. There are a fair number of studies that have addressed the 12-step approach, and they do seem to support the efficaciousness of it. The study that I mentioned about the 200-some men who were addicted to opiates was not our study, but that is an example of the impact of a spirituality-based therapeutic approach for those people who were addicted. MR. CHAPPELL: Thank you. DR. GORDON: Any other questions from any of the commissioners? [No response.] DR. GORDON: I have one. If you could push us in the direction of doing something, recommending something as a commission to move the whole field ahead, I am just curious, what would each of you suggest to us? One recommendation that we might make that would push or bring with us the whole field of CAM, that would make sense from your perspective. DR. CALLAHAN: I guess I would simply stress the point I made. I would like to have a better understanding of what there is about CAM that attracts so many people when there is this alternative system that purports to be dealing well with people. To me, there is a mystery here and it is worth really trying to explore; what gap is it filling, and how is it filling it. DR. GORDON: Thank you. MS. ADES: I would like to see the working group to study the research methodology. DR. GORDON: The study the research methodology, okay. MS. HAYES: I think it is about communication and openness. DR. GORDON: Any specific kind of proposal for that? MS. HAYES: Well, I am coming from a funding perspective. I think foundations have to be inspired to look at this, but they need help. The two of us here, we are among only a handful of foundations that are willing to look at this. It is a very small fraction of our budgets. We have to be willing to share our experiences, but at the same time, I think the government bears some responsibility in this, too, and as I mentioned, to facilitate those conversations. DR. GORDON: So to facilitate a conversation among foundations as well. MS. HAYES: Yes, and communicate that it can be done. As I said earlier, it is not going to be messy and it is not going to hurt, and we can all benefit from it. DR. GORDON: Thank you. DR. TEMPLETON: I would like to urge that, because all of us are in this learning process, that if one looks to a consensus conference or something, that it not be a CAM consensus conference but pick two or three components of CAM that has more coherence to it, herbal therapy or something like that, and then work with a meeting that would involve the foundations as well as the research experts to be able to come up with better models for studies. It becomes too diffuse if you try to just do it all at once. DR. GORDON: Thank you all very much. We really appreciate it. Let's take a 10-minute break now, okay, and then we will come back. [Recess.] DR. GORDON: We are going to begin Session X. This is Private Sector Support for CAM Research. Again, thank you all for coming, and thank you for coming and clearing your schedules on short notice. We are going to have five speakers, and we will listen to all five, and then we will have a chance for questions and dialogue. ******************************************************** First, is Mr. Randy Burkholder from Advanced Medical Technology Association. Session X: Private Sector Support for CAM Research MR. BURKHOLDER: Good morning, Dr. Gordon and Commission Members. Thank you for having me speak here this morning. Forgive me if I don't directly answer all your questions, I have been listening to the debates this week. [Laughter.] MR. BURKHOLDER: I am here on behalf of Advanced Medical Technology Association. We represent the producers and innovators in the field of medicine thank you, and our members produce over 90 percent of the medicine equipment and supplies that are consumed in the United States. Today, I hope to offer to you some insight into private-sector research, and complementary and alternative medicine from the vantage point of the medical technology field. First of all, a little context on the health trends shaping CAM research that I am sure you are familiar with. Consumers, as we all know from personal experience, are spending more and more on health care. In fact, that figure has quadrupled over the past 20 years. It now tops $500 billion a year. One thing we still have money for, certainly, is complementary and alternative medicines. I am sure most of you are familiar with the figure reported by Dr. Eisenberg, that Americans spend an impressive $12.2 billion of their own money on complementary and alternative medicines in 1997. Five Mountain Medicine Center in Hawaii is one place that some of that is being spent. This center seeks a new model for health in the 21st century by bringing together leading-edge technology and complementary and alternative techniques. Dr. Earl Bakken [ph] is president of the board of that facility. He also invented the first wearable external pacemaker in 1957, and cofounded Metronic, Incorporated. Dr. Bakken foresees 10 important health trends in the coming decades. Some of them are particularly relevant for our discussion today. One of those is rising demand for quality versus cost-cutting; the rise of the individual as his or her own health manager; the rise of the Internet, of course; and the integration of complementary care. Several of these trends can be described together as the shift toward a patient- or consumer-centered health care delivery system. The dramatic growth in CAM over the past 10 years, of course, has been an important and early indicator of this trend. But who exactly are these empowered health care consumers that we keep hearing so much about? Well, for one, they are spending almost three times as much on diet products, $33 billion a year, as they are on CAM. The outcome, or at least one way of looking at it, was reported this week in the Journal of the American Medicine Association, a 60 percent rise in obesity since 1991, and obesity, of course, is second only to smoking as a cause of premature deaths in the United States. It might make you wonder what exactly the health care consumer is going to do in the coming years with all his or her new-found power. I think that is what brings us to this table today, is to answer that question, what will health care consumers do with their new clout. With reliable information, I believe they will do good things. In fact, the longevity of a patient-centered health care system depends on reliable information. CAM, as a vibrant, integrated component of that system, depends on reliable information as well. From the private sector perspective, then, how do you foster development of good information on CAM? As we consider that issue, I think it is instructive to look back at Dr. Bakken's pacemaker. It was, as I mentioned, a rather bulky, wearable, external device. Today, if you can see it, the little one I put on the table in front of me would be on the larger side. Today, they are often implanted on an outpatient basis in the pectoris with non-thoracotomy leads inserted transvenously. They are packed with therapeutic capabilities that even Dr. Bakken probably wouldn't have dreamed of 30 years ago. So medical technology certainly has come a long way since the early days of the pacemaker. There are three fundamental characteristics of medical technology innovation that I think are important to consider. One, it is very diverse. It encompasses, of course, everything from laparoscopes to molecular diagnostics and image-guided surgery systems. Second, it is dynamic. It draws on many different areas of science. It is a non-linear process and it involves close dialogue between the innovator and the clinicians, and it is very rapid. The average life cycle of a new medical technology is a mere 18 to 24 months, and in some segments such as cardiology, it is even less than that. It is important to note that the incredible technological advances of the past three decades have occurred in concert with the development of a rigorous pre- and post-market regulatory system in the field of medical technology. In the Medical Device Amendments of 1976, Congress set some basic scientific principles to guide the marketing of medical devices and diagnostics. To the extent to which Joe Levitt or David Feigal went over those in detail yesterday, I will keep my comments brief, but some of the important things that Congress said in that law were, they said if you want to sell a new medical device or diagnostic test, you need to prove that it is safe and effective. They said if you want to make a new labeling claim, you need to back that up with reliable data. They said if there is an adverse event with your product that causes patient harm, or could have caused patient harm, that you need to report that to the Food and Drug Administration, and they said that FDA will inspect manufacturer's facilities to ensure the quality of the products being produced. This regulation, as I said, has been an important component of the dramatic boom in innovation over the past 30 years. It has helped inspire and maintain consumer confidence in medical technology. It has helped the industry weather the rare safety problems that inevitably arise, and it has formed an important part of the foundation for innovation over the past three decades. In spite of the breakthroughs that have been made and are still being made, there are some barriers to continued research that we face in the medical technology field. One of those is a lack of research funding. There is less venture capital funding today as a percentage of overall financing than there was seven s ago. It has been in decline over that time, in part, due to the great interest in the Internet dot-coms. Sources of private research funding also are diminishing. The Whittaker Foundation, as you may know, is the largest private sponsor of bioengineering education and research at universities and medical schools in the United States and Canada. That foundation has decided to spend down its principle and to cease operation in 2006. Finally, there is comparatively little funding at the National Institutes of Health for bioengineering. Currently, only 5 percent of NIH research spending, about $500 million goes for bioengineering research. Despite the importance of the NIH to funding bioengineering research, it is not explicitly recognized at the NIH. Regulation can, of course, be another important barrier to research. For complementary and alternative medicine, I think this could take the form either inadequate or excessive regulation. In the field of medical technology, we haven't faced the problem of inadequate regulation over the past 25 years, but what I am meaning by that is that regulations must be sufficient to govern or direct research and foster development of reliable data. Further, the lack of adequate regulations in a field like medical technology or CAM, can leave the field more vulnerable to erosion of consumer confidence when serious health problems or safety problems arise. This in turn can weaken the field overall and discourage further research. That being said, excessive regulation can, of course, also have an equally detrimental effect. It is interesting to hear the debate over randomized, controlled trials over the past few days. There has certainly parallel debate in the field of medical technology over the past 10 years, or at least comparable in some ways. When regulators start asking for excessive data up front on comparative clinical or cost effectiveness outcomes in defined patient populations, they likely will drive away good products and freeze further research. CAM, like medical technology, is a diverse field, and it is important for the regulations to recognize this diversity and to be commensurate with the type of technology that is under consideration. Despite these potential barriers, I think there are some encouraging trends in private CAM research. One is the ongoing debate over regulation. I think this is healthy. It brings the key stakeholders together, and hopefully enters into a process of defining an appropriate regulatory system that encourages further research. The increasing number of medical students interested in CAM and the increasing attention being given to CAM at medical schools in providing instruction also is encouraging. Those students, of course, are tomorrow's champions and researchers in the field. Third, I would point to the increasing integration of CAM and traditional medical technologies and technology companies. I think that will be an important factor in the growth of research in this field. You can see this in the growing number of pharmaceutical companies taking an interest in CAM as well as the activities of companies like Metronic, which through their foundation, are funding research into areas that link cutting edge cardiovascular technologies with alternative treatment techniques. To the extent that CAM becomes linked to these endeavors and to these companies driven by scientific research, research on CAM itself will increase. I think that leaves us with three basic points, or it leaves me with three basic points, anyway. One is reliable information, a patient-centered health care system, and I think the role of CAM in that system depends on reliable information and the provision of that information to the consumer. Second, is adequate regulation. Companies need to be up front, involved in a system of appropriate regulation. Third, is continued integration. As I mentioned, as CAM increasingly is linked with medical technology and technology companies, research in CAM will increase. I think that would move us toward the goal that we are seeking, which is a field based on sound science that enjoys strong consumer confidence and continued growth in the 21st century. Thank you. DR. GORDON: Thank you very much. Next is Dr. Raymond Ruddon from Johnson and Johnson. DR. RUDDON: Thank you. Someone mentioned this morning, I am not used to talking without slides, or as an old professor, at least a piece of chalk in my hand. So I hope this will be clear. I also want to thank the White House Commission on Complementary and Alternative Medicine for this opportunity to present, from Johnson and Johnson's point of view, our thoughts about this very important area of public health concern. Meetings such as this will help focus public policy initiates to assure that this important approach to the prevention and treatment of human disease reaches its full potential. We want to address the Commission concerning the issues involved in facilitating research in this area, and particularly how private industry may help facilitate that. Johnson and Johnson has addressed this expanding need for research and product development in complementary and alternative medicine in a number of ways, and I will list a few of these. We believe that complementary and alternative medical products do provide a new approach to disease prevention that is different from the traditional medicines that are aimed primarily at treatment rather than prevention. As more and more people become better informed about their own health and wellness, we believe that the so- called complementary and alternative medical products will come to represent an important range of new choices for consumers. At J&J, we have undertaken a number of initiatives to address this focus. In 1997, we established a Disease Prevention/Health Promotion Task Force, which I chaired, consisting of members from a number of our operating companies that have interest in this area that do provide products for a wide range of health care products. This task force had the following specific aims: first, in order to broaden our understanding of the disease prevention and health promotion strategies, the task force undertook an extensive review of current literature in the field. We also sought to identify some of the key individuals, research groups, and organizations who are leaders in these fields and to make arrangements to consult with them about the status of research and potential opportunities. The task force then acted to identify and prioritize the best leads that provide an opportunity for Johnson and Johnson, based on the quality of supporting data, consumer self-selection, proprietary protection, market size, and fit within the Johnson and Johnson operating companies' existing business competencies and platforms. The need for further research and the best way to accomplish that research was carefully assessed at J&J. We have established a number of ways to help support projects and bring potential products into development in this area. I will mention, for example, two granting mechanisms that the Corporate Office of Science and Technology has, of which I am the director. One is a focused giving grant, which is a basic grant, no strings attached, primarily to fund academic investigators in a wide variety of biomedical research, but this could include CAM research. We also have a seed grant program, which is more focused. There are some strings attached, in the sense of right of first refusal for data that comes out of that. Finally, our task force was charged with the responsibility of developing ways to monitor the progress of research in the field of disease prevention and health promotion, and to anticipate future product opportunities. The task force interviewed, either on-site or at J&J, a number of key investigators in alternative medicine, and these included groups from Harvard Medical School. We met, in fact, with David Eisenberg twice from Harvard. We also met with investigators from Johns Hopkins University, the University Illinois-Chicago, Rutgers, the National Cancer Institute, and a number of others. J&J has used its seed grant program to sponsor academic industry research collaborations. We have one ongoing right now at the University of California-Berkeley, for example, on developing methods to screen bioactive materials in complex mixtures and to do development mechanism of action studies. J&J companies have also been active in the development of products for disease prevention such as Benecol to reduce cholesterol levels, and Splenda, an artificial sweetener that diabetics can use. Our company has also pioneered in the field of health and wellness programs, and we have a wealth of knowledge and proprietary intervention programs which have been introduced to American workers through job site programs. Indeed, we have a whole company in our family of companies called Health Care System that is focused on this important issue. Against this backdrop of activity experience, I would like to approach the questions that were posed by the Commission. First: What can be done to expand the current research environment, and can the private sector stimulate CAM research? It is clear, I think, from the number of speakers both today and yesterday, that we do need solid, basic research to be carried out to provide the fundamental knowledge of the mechanism of action of complementary and alternative medicine agents and practices, on ways to identify active components in complex mixtures, to carry out bioviability studies, basic pharmacology and toxicology studies. We also need robust clinical protocols to verify that complementary and alternative medicine agents and procedures truly produce the claimed clinical benefits. Now, private industry can help these efforts through research collaborations with academic and other research groups, and NIH, and foundations, as mentioned this morning. A number of such collaborations could be cited as precedent, including the Human Genome Project, the SNP Consortium, and a recently funded Alliance for Cellular Signaling. I think, also, we should keep in mind that there are a couple of mechanisms available using, for example, the Small Business Innovation Research, or SBIR, grants. In the Technology Transfer, such as the Cooperative Research and Development Agreements, or CRDA agreements. The second question posed is: What types of incentives are needed to stimulate research on complementary and alternative medicine practices, and what are the obstacles and solutions? In order to provide the incentives to private industry, intellectual property issues must be resolved. Even assuming significant consumer demand for a product or device a reasonable business plan cannot be constructed to enter that market unless some marketing protection is available in return for substantiating the public health benefits of a product. Additional approaches, such as legislative exclusivity remedies, for example, something akin to the Ortho-Drug program, may be necessary in order to provide incentives to establish that these products are safe, effective, and have desirable public health benefits. Finally, without established and transparent regulatory pathways, well established and well-meaning corporations, like J&J and others, cannot fulfill the public health need for these medicines, complementary and alternative medicines. The third question: How can complementary and alternative medicine and conventional research communities be more effectively integrated to stimulate and coordinate research? A number of speakers have addressed that, so I will just be brief in added some of these. First of all, I think we do need to expand communication between traditional and conventional medical experts, and many speakers have addressed that. I think we do