Read on for some additional examples of how the public is being endangered by alternative medicine

The 1994 Dietary Supplement Health Education Act, was passed by Congress in response to an extensive lobbying campaign by the multi-billion-dollar alternative medicine industry. The law prohibits the FDA from regulating any alternative medicine labeled "nutritional supplement, unless it can prove that the product is hazardous to consumers." Under the existing DHSEA law, the FDA doesn't have the authority to ban products containing an ingredient which has been linked to more than a thousand heart attacks, strokes, seizures, and other serious adverse effects.

The legislative calamity surrounding ephedra has led to a mind-boggling proliferation of unproven and potentially hazardous nostrums for sale. According to FDA's acting commissioner, Lester M. Crawford, D.V.M., Ph.D., 29,000 nutritional supplements are now marketed in the United States with a thousand more being added every year. In 2003, the industry made nearly $20 billion in sales. Federal law now leaves the safety of these products up to the scruples of marketers, yet studies show those scruples too often are lacking. Many of these products do not contain the amount of active ingredients listed on the label; some don't have any at all; while others are adulterated with lead, arsenic, or other toxic substances. And some are laced with prescription medications that can cause serious adverse effects or death in vulnerable, unsuspecting customers. Some examples include:

• The Chinese herbal remedies PC-SPES and SPES, widely promoted for "prostate health," were shown to be laced with the notorious teratogen diethylstilbestrol (DES), the blood thinner wafarin, and other prescription medications. Because these adulterants are believed to have caused blood clots, bleeding, and other adverse health effects, the products were pulled from the market and consumers have filed a class-action suit against the manufacturer.
• Many people who have taken colloidal silver supplements have been permanently disfigured by the silver that turned their skin and internal organs a corpse-like gray. In 1999, the FDA banned the sale of these products as medicines, but thanks to the Kafkaesque legislation, it still allows companies to sell them as "nutritional supplements."
• Recent studies have shown that many herbal remedies from India and China contain harmful levels of lead, mercury, arsenic, or other toxic substances. Many are marketed for children, who are at the highest risk of heavy-metal poisoning. Yet, these products continue to be sold throughout the United States without FDA or other government-required testing.
• At least 38 people died and more than 1,500 were disabled by eosinophilia-myalgia syndrome following consumption of contaminated L-tryptophan before the FDA banned the sale of the supplement in 1990. Officials estimate that another 3,000 to 10,000 cases of the disabling disease were caused by this product but were never reported. Nevertheless, this supplement continues to be sold in the United States via the Internet, with no regulation to assure that the deadly contamination does not recur.

These are just a few examples of the harm being caused by the retreat from scientific medicine. Despite the phenomenal success of science-based medicine, we are seeing a reversion to irrational and superstitious approaches to medical practice.

The Threat to Mental Health

Over the past few decades, the fields of clinical psychology, psychiatry, and social work have been undermined by a widening gap between research and practice. "Less and less of what researchers do finds its way into the consulting room, and less and less of what practitioners do derives from scientific evidence," says Scott Lilienfeld, Ph.D., an associate professor of psychology at Emory University and the editor of The Scientific Review of Mental Health Practice (SRMHP). As many have observed, this deepening divide is eroding the scientific foundations of clinical psychology and allied disciplines and is lowering the opinion of these fields in the minds of the public, he says.

Current and past projects of CSMMH

One project with which CSMMH has been involved is Columbia University's now-discredited prayer study. That study - which claimed Christian prayers recited thousands of miles away over photographs of patients at an infertility clinic in Korea had doubled the patients' conception rate - was published in the September 2001 issue of the Journal of Reproductive Medicine. Its lead author was Rogerio Lobo, M.D., then the chair of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Columbia.

Thanks to our efforts and the heroic persistence of Bruce Flamm, M.D., who authored three Scientific Review of Alternative Medicine (SRAM) articles on the scandal, the press finally paid notice. As a result of the embarrassing news coverage, Dr. Lobo has withdrawn his name as author. We are continuing to press the editor of the Journal of Reproductive Medicine to retract the apparently fraudulent study.

Another major project of CSMMH was the testing of Nastasha Demkina, the 17-year-old girl who the news media call the "girl with X-ray eyes." Ms. Demkina is widely acclaimed in Russia and by many in the United Kingdom as having a special vision that allows her to diagnose illnesses by seeing inside the patient's body. Last year, a film production company asked for our help in designing and conducting a scientific test of her claims for a program to be broadcast on the Discovery Channel.

After investigating her claims and agreeing on a test protocol, the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal fellows Ray Hyman, Ph.D., Richard Wiseman, Ph.D., and I met in New York City to conduct a preliminary test of Ms. Demkina to see if her claims were worthy of further testing. The program, which has been broadcast in Europe and Asia but not yet in North America, shows how she failed to past our test.

CSMMH future plans

CSMMH is working on other projects, such as organizing conferences and providing vital information for health care providers and consumers on our Web sites. With your help, we will be able to conduct this badly needed research as well as:

• Establish the Commission as a respected source of information for the public, for medical and mental health care providers, for educators, and for news media and the public;
• Become an effective watchdog of attempts of quacks and pseudoscientists to obtain state licensing for their brand of unproven and potentially harmful practices;
• Become a leading proponent of integrity in medical and mental health education speaking out loudly against the use of bogus degrees and other credentials among educators and healthcare providers.