Peter Chowka on January 23, 2001

This section is compiled by Frank M. Painter, D.C.
Send all comments or additions to:   Frankp@chiro.org

I'm a writer and journalist. For more than 25 years I've been reporting about alternative medicine in a variety of media - since 1994 on the Internet. Nine years ago the Congress representing the people called on the federal government to establish the Office of Alternative Medicine (OAM). I was one of about 100 people chosen to serve on the OAM's first program advisory panels, including a panel about information collection and dissemination and alternative medicine databases.

Those were the days before the Internet and we couldn't imagine then what the Net would have to offer. Net users have gone from 0 in 1993 to over 300 million in 2000. In 1992, we also could not foresee the growth in the OAM (now NCCAM - National Center for Complementary Alternative Medicine) budget - or that nine years later, relatively little information would be disseminated to the public which is ironic considering the CAM (Complementary Alternative Medicine) information explosion.

I'm not going to criticize the OAM or NCCAM or this commission today. The challenges are substantial, everyone means well, and a lot of advances are being made.

Instead, I'd like to make a few comments and suggestions based on my substantial experience with the Net. I use the Internet as a journalist - to do most of my research, to communicate with people all over the world, and to publish - and also as a medical consumer. According to the Pew Research Center study Nov. 26, 2000 (The Online Health Care Revolution: How the Web helps Americans take better care of themselves), Fifty-two million adult Americans - 55 percent of the Internet-user population - have turned to Internet sources to seek health information.

Information is power; it's currency. People inside the Beltway have long known this. Nowadays, consumers are becoming more empowered - by information. Growing consumer interest and choice and the free marketplace have come together to drive the growth of Complementary Alternative Medicine and make innovative health options possible and more accessible. Information online is exploding - from proponents and opponents of CAM therapies, mainstream and CAM medical journals, news stories, newsgroups, personal Web sites, disease- and therapy-based health sites, and portals like WebMD and Medscape.

Today, more people are learning that critical issues including health care are increasingly outside the conventional political arena. Change is not coming from the top down. Instead, individual consumers are becoming better informed and educated and are taking more personal responsibility for their own health. Demands for information, choice, and autonomy are growing. (Too often, in my experience, new government programs just get in the way.)

Recommendations

• More resources should be given immediately to expanding the government's Web sites devoted to CAM. We don't have to wait for the data and the studies to come in years from now. And data and studies are rarely definitive anyway.
  
  

• The sites can provide abundant resources without making specific recommendations. They could help to organize and link to the plethora of information that already exists - not only pro-alt med sources, but skeptical ones, as well. Let the American people have access to all of the information and then they can better decide what's best for them.
  
  

• The government can play a supportive role in helping to overcome the limitations with health info on the Web. On Jan. 15, 2001 a report by the Detwiler Group of Fort Wayne, Indiana "detail[ed] shortcomings of e-health sites." According to the report, "While Internet sites provide a convenient source of healthcare information, not all of their content is timely or accessible."

As the late Robert Mendelsohn, MD often said, modern medicine has become like a medieval priesthood, inaccessible and largely unaccountable. The Internet is quickly helping to change, and to democratize, that status quo.

To paraphrase Patrick Henry, "Give me Internet health information, or give me death!"

In summary: It would be helpful if the government's CAM programs could better implement the intention of Congress a decade ago to disseminate CAM information to the public by moving more proactively and aggressively into a leadership position with alt med online.

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