Sugar Pills

From MSNBC: "Ten years ago the government set out to test herbal and other alternative health remedies to find the ones that work. After spending $2.5 billion, the disappointing answer seems to be that almost none of them do.  Echinacea for colds. Ginkgo biloba for memory. Glucosamine and chondroitin for arthritis. Black cohosh for menopausal hot flashes. Saw palmetto for prostate problems. Shark cartilage for cancer. All proved no better than dummy pills in big studies funded by the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine."

My first question is: Where is this taxpayer funded information available? Turns out it's http://nccam.nih.gov/ !  Pretty catchy, right?  I would like it, although I'd never expect it, if the government created some sort of portal web-site to locate any and all information that they produce.  A while back my complaint was that even in locating the information as to where the stimulus bill funds would go, I was linked to an outside web-site and had to do more searching to find the full text.  This really shouldn't be the case.

The other problem the article raises, and is clear even from the echinacea research prominently posted on the front page is that this government body lacks the backbone to stand up for its research.  If the researcher was bad then they shouldn't have gotten the money, but the research had a person test 3 different delivery vehicles for a type of echinacea at a specific dose.  When the results showed no improvement they were published, and because of backlash the "Research Challenges" section was added, which is almost as long as the article itself, suggesting that there are different varieties and doses of echinacea that they can't speak for that may work!  Useless.