Not anymore. Quite apart from the new clinic, the Stanford Center for Research in Disease Prevention is one of 10 centers nationwide investigating alternative therapies. Stanford's research is focused on aging and funded in part by a four-year, $1 million grant from the National Institutes of Health. The researchers are looking into the effects of soy protein on postmenopausal women, measuring the cholesterol-lowering properties of garlic and assessing the healthfulness of processed foods versus plant foods. If approved, future projects will scrutinize the effects of meditation and the slow-motion martial art, tai chi.
Americans spend $13 billion a year on such alternative practices, says psychologist Kenneth Pelletier, a clinical associate professor of medicine and the director of the research project. That's why mainstream medicine has a responsibility to use the tools of scientific inquiry -- random samples, double-blind studies -- to separate the hokum from the healthful. "We're not advocates of alternative medicine," Pelletier says. "We're analysts and investigators."
Michael Murphy sits on the advisory committee that guides the Stanford research. Esalen also has donated its archive of 13,000 alternative medicine articles to the medical school library.
Despite these developments, alternative practices have yet to penetrate the Stanford Medical School curriculum. In fact, the only course that touches on the subject is given by Clinical Professor of Medicine Wallace Sampson, one of the leading critics of alternative medicine. But a group of students at the medical school has formed amigos -- the Alternative Medicine Interest Group of Stanford -- to bring in lunchtime speakers on homeopathy, ethno-botany and traditional Chinese medicine. "Everyone's patients are going to be using alternative therapies," says Alison Yager, a third-year medical student who helped organize amigos. "It only makes sense to know something about them."
