Office of Alternative Medicine Premieres its Web Site
by Peter Barry Chowka From Natural Healthline |
Funded by Congressional legislation in 1991, the OAM, according to its Home Page, "identifies and evaluates unconventional health care practices. . . supports and conducts research and research training on these practices and disseminates information." The description goes on: "Organized under the Associate Director for Disease Prevention within the Office of the Director of the NIH, the OAM does not serve as a referral agency for various alternative medical treatments or individual practitioners. The OAM facilitates and conducts biomedical research. The NIH cautions users not to seek the therapies described on these pages without the consultation of a licensed health care provider. Inclusion of a treatment or resource on the OAM Web site does not imply endorsement by the OAM, the NIH, or the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS)."
When I visited the OAM site on three occasions in early July, the pages loaded slowly, although there is a faster text-only option available. Some features, like the minutes of the meetings of AMPAC (the Alternative Medicine Program Advisory Council), were not yet available. But there was quite a bit of information about alternative medicine that could be potentially useful to someone looking for credible healing options. Highlights include a FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions file), a search-the-site feature, information on the OAM's grants and its new information clearinghouse, suggestions on how to search for information on and off the Net, and the text of the OAM's quarterly newsletters going back several years. It is hoped that eventually the site will offer links to medical sites and sources on the Internet other than simply government ones.
Ultimately, the existence of the OAM's Web site that people around the world can now visit, like the introduction over five years ago of the OAM itself, is a de facto indication of the mounting importance, credibility, and political viability of complementary alternative medicine.
For more information,
Office of Alternative Medicine Home Page
http://altmed.od.nih.gov/oam/
Acupuncture.com |