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Editorials:
Edwin L. Cooper
Bioprospecting: a CAM Frontier
eCAM 2005; 2: 1-3 [Full text] [PDF]
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[Read eLetter] Validating CAM therapies.
Pradeep G Paul   (14 April 2005)

Validating CAM therapies. 14 April 2005
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Pradeep G Paul,
Epidemiologist
Vision Research Foundation, 21 Pycrofts Garden road, Nungambakkam, Chennai - 600006.

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Re: Validating CAM therapies.

Dear Editor,

Thank you very much for this interesting and enlightening article on "Bioprospecting: a CAM Frontier"

I would like to congratulate the author for bringing to fore the facts about CAM.In this era of evidence based medicine, most of the CAM therapies have been evaluated in ways of the modern medical analytical ways like the Randomized clinical trials (RCT's).

RCT's will never be able to identify the subtle differences in the CAM therapies and thats is the reason why most of the CAM therapies which has been time tested by way of these RCT's have been discredited.I strongly feel the urgent need to devise "Methods for Validating CAM therapies" Most of the CAM therapies are personalized.

I am practioner of Siddha Medicine, a fore runner to Ayurveda which is praticed in Tamilnadu, India.The therapy that we institute is based on the patients dhosa status and is highly personalised.

For example: disease classification is Siddha medicine is based on the dhosa's and is similar to Ayurveda.If a patient is found to have agravated pitha status, he will be administered medication which will lower his Pitha status.So any effort to validate the therapy must take into account that the person who was indentified to have a pitha agravation how is he prognosing with the medication.Most studies which are validating the CAM therapies tends to forget the diagnostic basis under which the personalized care is advised.Subgroup analysis based on the CAM diagnosis and then equating it with the prognosis based on the personlised care will be the ideal way to analyse/ validate the CAM therapies.

Western medicine is late in moving towards the personalized approach to diseases.Scientists across the globe have started to talk about genetic differences in diseases and Pharmacogenomics to find out, which drug worked good for a person.

Its a know fact that most diseases have some amount of genotype - phenotype correlation, so any change in the genotype results in the phenotypic expression and resultant disease.In Siddha and Ayurveda the therapy is personalised.By examining a patient, feeling his pulse and from his anthropomorphics (phenotype), Siddha physicians were able to get some idea about the persons genotype and institute personalised therapy based on his dhosa constitution.But the modern science is going the roundabout way to identify genes and its association to diseases etc.

As CAM practioners and CAM researchers, Lets wake up to work towards validating CAM therapies in a scientific way which takes into account the science of diagnosis of the CAM.

Conflict of Interest:

None declared