Senator Harkin, the Office of Alternative
Medicine (OAM) is adrift. There is no longer an advisory board since, by
law, the ad hoc board had to be dissolved after its third meeting; but a
National Advisory Council has still not been chartered. Please help get
this National Advisory Council approved within the next several weeks. This
Council should then meet to help the OAM staff deal with the accumulated
problems of the office.
At your June 24 [1993] hearings, you requested five extra OAM employees.
These still have not been approved. Meanwhile, OAM is overwhelmed with work.
Please appeal to HHS Secretary Donna Shalala to get this moving.
Dr. Jay Moskowitz's change of jobs has left the OAM without a strong
friend at the top of NIH. Please help to make the OAM a Center of Alternative
Medicine next year, situated, if possible, within the office of the Director
of NIH. This will give it the power, independence, and funding authority
it needs to carry out its mandate.
Please increase OAM's budget next year, and get each Institute of the
NIH to allocate a certain percentage of its budget to alternative treatment
research. Please hold follow-up hearings this fall. Try to find out what
happened to the $1 million the OAM gave NCI; find out why OAM is being billed
$600,000 for a single meeting; and focus on the role of the FDA in hampering
the OAMs proposed field investigations.
Senator Harkin, you have been the mainstay of alternative medicine in
Congress. Please act now to revitalize the OAM, or it may soon exist in
name alone.
