New Surgeon General Should Back Alternative Medicine
New Surgeon General Should Back Alternative Medicine
One of the biggest clinical trials ever organized by our federal government indicated that generic medication for high blood pressure in use since the 1950s worked better than the newer drugs costing more than twenty times more. Yet Dr. Curt Furberg, the chair of the $130 million ALLHAT trial, resigned in frustration in August 2004, citing the lack of effort put into disseminating “the ALLHAT message.”A similar situation has existed since the 1997 publication of the Dietary Approach to Stop Hypertension (DASH) research study at Harvard. DASH emphasized a diet rich in potassium-containing foods such as fruits and vegetables, and more physical activity; these approaches, they found, could lower blood pressure in up to 90% of hypertensive patients without medication. Yet this too has fallen on deaf ears.
