
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, January 22, 1995                   TAG: 9501230004
SECTION: EXTRA                    PAGE: 9   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Short

ALTERNATIVE MEDICINE GETS ITS OWN JOURNAL

Investigators in homeopathy, herbal medicine and other non-conventional healing arts now have an outlet of their own. The Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine: Research on Paradigm, Practice and Policy debuts this month as the nation's first peer-reviewed journal devoted to alternative medicine.

The quarterly journal's challenge is to bridge the perceived gap between holistic medicine and scientific rigor. To do so, it has gathered an editorial board of respected physiologists, botanists, epidemiologists and medical historians - including former Surgeon General C. Everett Koop.

Editor-in-chief Marc S. Micozzi, a medical doctor and anthropologist who heads the National Museum of Health and Medicine in Bethesda, Md., said the journal ``will focus not only on the results of clinical trials, but on how to design studies ... in alternative medicine.'' High on the list of goals, he said, is to develop a better understanding of the placebo effect - the mysterious means by which a mere belief that one will get well actually increases the odds of doing so.

- Washington Post

by CNB