Harkin believed his allergies had been cured by bee pollen pills and expressed frustration with the "unbendable rules" of randomized clinical trials, saying, "it is not necessary for the scientific community to understand the process before the American public can benefit from these therapies.
"[11] Harkin's office reportedly pressured the OAM to fund studies of favored theories, including the use of bee pollen and antineoplastons as treatments.
OAM board member Barrie Cassileth publicly criticized the office as a purveyor of nonsense and described it as a "place where opinions are counted as equal to data".
"[12] Harkin drew support from Iowa Democrat Representative Berkley Bedell, who believed that cow colostrum had cured his Lyme disease.
The office drew increasing criticism for its perceived lack of rigorous scientific study of alternative approaches favoring uncritical boosterism.
that "Quackery will always prey on the gullible and uninformed, but we should not provide it with cover from the NIH," and called the office "an embarrassment to serious scientists".
It has bestowed the considerable prestige of the NIH on a variety of highly dubious practices, some of which clearly violate basic laws of physics".
[15] In 1995, Wayne Jonas, a promoter of homeopathy and political ally of Harkin, became the director of the OAM, and continued in that role until 1999.
NCCAM had a mandate to promote a more rigorous and scientific approach to the study of alternative medicine, research training and career development, outreach, and "integration".
Writing for Science-Based Medicine, David Gorski states Briggs was in an impossible position: "She was a real scientist trying to impose scientific rigor on an enterprise that was inherently resistant to such an imposition."
The plans used "one of the most harmful tactics of quacks to legitimize their quackery under the banner of 'integrative medicine,' the co-opting of the opioid crisis as an excuse to claim all nonpharmacological treatments for pain as being 'integrative.'
The results are threatening great harm to chronic pain patients by misguided governments wanting to force them to undergo quack treatments like acupuncture as a means of getting them off opioids."
[24] Continued increasing use of CAM products was also blamed on the lack of FDA ability to regulate alternative products, where negative studies do not result in FDA warnings or FDA-mandated changes on labeling, whereby few consumers are aware that many claims of many supplements were found not to be supported.
[24] In 2014, while Josephine Briggs was the director, the NCCAM was renamed the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health (NCCIH).
Langevin "believes that the stretching of connective tissue is how several CAM modalities 'work,' such as chiropractic, massage, and ... acupuncture".
The NCCIH operates under a charter set by the National Advisory Council for Complementary and Integrative Health (NACCIH).
[29] NCCIH divides complementary and alternative medicine into natural products, including dietary supplements and herbal supplements; mind and body practices, including meditation, yoga, qigong, acupuncture and spinal manipulation (both chiropractic and osteopathic); and other approaches, such as homeopathy, naturopathy, Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), and ayurveda.
[6] NCCIH has been criticized by Steven E. Nissen, Stephen Barrett, and Kimball Atwood among others, for funding, along with the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute[34] a study of EDTA chelation therapy for coronary artery disease, which lasted about 10 years and cost about $31 million, even though smaller, controlled trials found chelation ineffective.
[35][36][37] Other NCCIH-funded studies have included the benefits of distant prayer for AIDS, the effects of lemon and lavender essential oils on wound healing,[5][38] "energy chelation", and "rats stressed out by white noise".
[40] A 2012 study published in the Skeptical Inquirer examined the grants and awards funded by NCCIH from 2000 to 2011, which totaled $1.3 billion.
It concluded that "There is no legitimate function that the NCCIH can serve that could not be better carried out by other existing organizations within the NIH umbrella.