According to a Digg entry I just read titled FDA to Regulate Vitamins Like They’re Pharmaceutical Drugs? the Food and Drug Administration is once again trying to get a handle on the largely unregulated health supplement industry. This time, however, they are expanding the campaign to include “complimentary” and “alternative” medicine.

I followed the link and read the docket cited: # 2006D-0480. Here are some quotes:

The term “complementary and alternative medicine” (CAM) encompasses a wide array of health care practices, products, and therapies that are distinct from practices, products, and therapies used in “conventional” or “allopathic” medicine.

So CAM means anything that isn’t “conventional” and the FDA wants to define “conventional” for us. Or, more likely, the pharmaceutical industry wants to tell the FDA how to define it. But that might just be my tinfoil hat talking.

“First, depending on the CAM therapy or practice, a product used in a CAM therapy or practice may be subject to regulation as a biological product, cosmetic, drug, device, or food (including food additives and dietary supplements) under the act or the PHS Act.”

So CAM can include dietary supplements. They’ve been after this one for a long time now. Maybe they’ll get it this time? And second, it can include a “device”. So, as the Digg above suggests, would massage stones become a medical device? What about those ionic bracelet thingies, or healing crystals?

ALTERNATIVE medicine should be just that. It is an “alternative” to paying out the nose to have a doctor tell you A: Something you already know B: Something that is untrue or C: Send you to someone else so you can repeat and get answers A or B.

Disclaimer:
Today might be a bad day for me to blog about this topic. See, I hurt my shoulder snowboarding over the winter, and in the last couple of months I have been to the Emergency Room, an Orthopedic Surgeon, a Massage Therapist and a Chiropractor.

The ER took X-rays and said it was just sore and needed to be in a sling. The Ortho said never to wear a sling because the muscles got stretched too much and needed to strengthen up. The massage gal said it came out of alignment and scar tissue was developing on the traumatized muscle, and that I should let it rest. The chiropractor put some electrodes on my shoulder and shocked me for about ten minutes, billed me and sent me home.

After all this time I still have no idea what is wrong with my shoulder, and none of them would refer me to get an MRI. God forbid we actually KNOW what is wrong so it can be treated instead of lining the pockets of “conventional” and “alternative” doctors, insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies (I have been popping Advil like Pez for months), etcetera.

Someone made an interesting point on the blog. If the FDA can’t keep drugs like Vioxx and Zelnorm from hitting the market before proper testing is done to show they don’t give people heart attacks, can’t keep ecoli-contaminated lettuce off the shelves, and can’t keep half the dogs and cats in the US from dying of kidney failure from poisoned food - How do they have time to worry about how much dandelion root I eat?