Bad alt-med study back on track, funded by tax money
So, the NCCAM (National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine) portion of NIH (the U.S.'s National Institute of Health) was funding a study on the use of chelation therapy (injecting special chemical in order to remove metals from the body) to treat heart disease.

The whole thing has oodles of problems:

NCCAM's scientific advisory board initially voted against funding the study, but then alt-med supporter Representative Dan Burton applied some pressure and NCCAM suddenly coughed up $30 million to fund the study.
The study, a phase 3 clinical trial, was done even though no phase 1 or phase 2 trials had been done, or even an animal study, contrary to the usual rules for a phase 3 study.
The IRBs (Institutional Review Boards) which approved the project weren't provided with accurate scientific information and risk estimates by those performing the project.
Many of the clinics where the study was being conducted had a financial interest in promoting chelation therapy, and the blinding protocol used was flawed in a way which let the investigators know which injections were the drug and which were the placebo.
"Several site co-investigators have been disciplined for substandard practices by state medical boards, several have been involved in insurance fraud, and at least three are convicted felons." [From the NIH's response to a complaint about the study]
"Since the mid-1970's court documents and newspapers have reported at least 30 deaths associated with intravenous disodium EDTA." [Also quoted from the NIH's response]
The informed consent forms given to the study volunteers left out important risks.

#3 to #7 (plus other things left out of this summary) were enough to get the study halted, and combined with #1 and #2 you'd think that it would stay halted. But nope, the study is back on track. The NIH basically:

Told the people performing the study to inform the volunteers of the risks they'd left off of the consent forms.
Told the IRBs to clean up their acts so that they'd catch similar problems in the future.
Gave those performing the study a slap on the wrist.
Otherwise carry on as they had before.

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	miss_padfoot 2009-07-03 03:43 am UTC (link)
	You know what? I'm all for studying this crap with LEGITIMATE studies, just because it'll be nice to have it debunked more thoroughly. But this is a giant clusterfuck. I cannot believe they are hiring convicted felons with obvious conflicts of interests. I thought the NIH was better than this. (Reply to this)(Thread)

khym_chanur
2009-07-03 04:18 am UTC (link)

I'm all for studying this crap with LEGITIMATE studies, just because it'll be nice to have it debunked more thoroughly.

People who already believe aren't dissuaded by negative studies; NCCAM has already produced plenty of negative studies that haven't changed anyone's mind. There might be some fence-sitters who'd be swayed, but I don't know if there's enough of them to make funding such studies worth it. NCCAM does fund the study of some things that might be useful, like the pharmacological effects of various herbs, but those things could be funded by other arms of NIH without having to label it "alternative medicine".

I thought the NIH was better than this.

When you have one of the politicians that holds (or can at least influence) the purse-strings of your organization putting the pressure on you... Also, the NCCAM portion of NIH was explicitly set up (by Congress) to support alt-med, and I don't know how much power the mother organization has to veto them.

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miss_padfoot
2009-07-03 05:58 am UTC (link)

There might be some fence-sitters who'd be swayed, but I don't know if there's enough of them to make funding such studies worth it.

I was thinking of the fence-sitters, yeah. I know that with the vaccination stuff, there's a lot of parents who are fence-sitters (i.e. not getting their children vaccinated because they aren't sure it's a good idea), and that's because they don't know the facts about vaccines. The same may be true of chelation therapy, so I figure having more ammunition from a real study wouldn't hurt. Of course, there's a limit to how much money can be spent on it.

I mostly agree with you about NCCAM not being a very good idea in the first place, but this might not be entirely their fault, since they only let this study go through under pressure from Rep. Burton. I looked him up and yeah, he's on Government Oversight and Reform (!). It's not surprising that they shit their pants when he started heckling them.

...gah, this whole thing makes me angry. My father is a physiologist, so he has to apply to NIH for grants for real studies a lot. It blows my mind that scientists with good studies get turned down all the time, yet they'll shell out $30 million for a dangerous farce like this.

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