The Development of the Office of Alternative Medicine in the National Institutes of Health, 1991-1996

In 1991 the Senate Appropriations Committee responsible for funding the National Institutes of Health (NIH) declared itself "not satisfied that the conventional medical community as symbolized at the NIH has fully explored the potential that exists in unconventional medical practices." "Many routine and effective medical procedures now considered commonplace," like cancer radiation therapy, had once been "considered . . . quackery"; to "more adequately explore these unconventional medical practices," the Committee directed the NIH to set up within the Director's Office "an advisory panel to screen and select the procedures for investigation and to recommend a research program to fully test the most promising unconventional medical practices." This "advisory panel" became the Office of Alternative Medicine (OAM). Thus government was brought in a new and very direct way into a growing national health-care conflict between the forces of establishment biomedicine and the [End Page 279] diverse ranks of alternative medicine, the latter gaining increased acceptance and usage by the American public. In determining whether this trend promoted or jeopardized the public health, the actions of the Office of Alternative Medicine (OAM) might well be decisive. Factors underlying its legislative creation justified skepticism about the scientific standards that would be applied in the Office's future role.The prime mover of this edict was Appropriations Committee chair Thomas R. Harkin, a Democrat from Iowa, in his second Senate term after having served four terms in the House. Harkin had been urged to take this legislative step by two constituents, Berkley Bedell and Frank Wiewel. Bedell, a former member of the House, believed that two crises in his own health had benefited from the use of unconventional medicine: colostrum derived from the milk of a Minnesota cow