Creating rigorous methodologies to test the efficacy of unconventional medical practices, scientists say, will become increasingly important as findings in some fast- moving biomedical research areas--psychoneuroimmunology and psycho- pharmacology, for example--converge with the integrative ideas of alternative medicine. Several innovative funding initiatives from philanthropic foundations are also expected to help in this task, they say, and newly established alternative medical education courses at a number of top medical schools should serve to further interweave establishment and alternative medical research.
Investigators add that health-care reform, as it evolves, may emphasize the preventive and behavioral aspects of biomedicine, aspects considered central to many alternative therapies, also contributing to growth in those areas.
"We're going to bring together people from the alternative medicine field with research methodologists, to try to see if there are new kinds of methodologies we can develop that are more appropriate to the kind of work we're doing," says ...
