If I write about Wallace Sampson one more time he will qualify for his own category on the right sidebar.
Dr. Sampson has another editorial on Medscape, opining about the old days.
Continue reading Dr. Sampson asks why clinical research has departed from rationality
Dr. Wallace Sampson rants on about traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) in the latest video editorial at Medscape. With so much going on in medicine today, why does Medscape use valuable bandwidth to restate, and promote his well-known disregard for CAM?
Is Medscape CAMophobic? Why would this organization allow Dr. Sampson to state that TCM is worthless because it was “developed in a tradition of an authoritarian culture?”
Does anybody really believe that?
In a video taped editorial, Dr. Wallace Sampson complains that the NCCAM on its website, “links to trade and unscientific occupational organizations, and presents anomalous methods in a ‘neutral’ light.” Furthermore, Dr. Wallace states, “It contains minimal cautionary, negative information.” This is all the more disturbing because we expect more from a government-sponsored information resource.
The NCCAM counters “while some scientific evidence exists regarding some CAM therapies, for most there are key questions that are yet to be answered through well-designed scientific studies, questions such as whether these therapies are safe and whether they work for the diseases or medical conditions for which they are used.”
As a clinical professor of medicine (emeritus) at Stanford University, and editor of The Scientific Review of Alternative Medicine, Dr. Sampson’s assessment must not be dismissed. Is it reasonable to expect that studies of CAM be as well designed as those of conventional medicine? I think so.
NCCAM provides a useful service in making CAM data available, but studies of ginseng, Ginkgo biloba, garlic supplements, coffee enemas, and glucosamine, for example, should be held to high study design standards.