Evaluating Complementary and Alternative Medicine: The Limits of Science and of Scientists

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See Schneiderman , supra note 5, at 95.

See id. at 87.

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See Hufford supra note 4.

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The authors concluded that “there is no evidence to recommend garlic therapy for lowering serum lipid levels.” Berthold, Sudhop, and von Bergman, supra note 19, at 1902.

In Berthold and colleagues' response to a critical letter in the next issue of JAMA, they state, “Even though the conclusions of our study apply only to the preparation we used, we believe that convincing evidence of lipid-lowering effects of any garlic preparation is still lacking.” Lawson L. D. , “Effect of Garlic on Serum Lipids” (with reply from Berthold, Sudhop, and von Bergman), JAMA, 280, no. 18 (1998): 1568. Although in the reply by Berthold, Sudhop, and von Bergman they offer brief comments regarding other studies that they feel support their conclusion, and offer a reason for having selected the remedy they used in their study, the fact remains that in their conclusion to their published paper they stated their broad conclusion regarding garlic and serum lipids as if the statement were a reasonable inference from their study. Further, they do not note the steam distillation as a possibly controversial element.

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Both of the Eisenberg et al. surveys of CAM use (supra note 10) illustrate this, as do many other surveys. A well-designed poll reported in Newsweek (March 31, 1997) found that 87 percent of Americans believe “that God answers prayers” and that 79 percent of Americans “say God answers prayers for healing someone with an incurable disease.” One can readily obtain a large body of additional survey data supporting this point by visiting Polling the Nations (a subscription database of all sorts of survey data, at <http://www.orspub.com>), and entering “prayer” as the search.

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