 Welcome, once again, to The Randy Show. I am the JRAF's field coordinator, Brian Thompson. And with me, as always, is James Randy. How are you doing today? Very well, very well. My voice was a little attenuated yesterday, and I unattainuated it, especially for this podcast. Oh, good, good. Yeah. We were in Colorado about a week ago. So are you recovering from that? I'm still sort of thawing out. Oh, no, I recovered within 48 hours or so. But the business of the high altitude and along with the time change, it was a little difficult to get around. I don't do without oxygen very easily at my age. So I have to breathe deep and speak slowly. Yeah. I think that the people in Colorado have evolved some sort of gill that they can just filter out what little oxygen there is in the air. I was looking at Phil Plates' neck, and I didn't see having it. He was wearing an open collar. Oh, well, he covers it up with concealer. He may have something concealed in his back, shoulder blades or something like that. But it is suspicious indeed. Yeah, I do. I think so. So we are going to talk about alternative medicine today, specifically NCAM. It's N-C-C-A-M. It's a sort of little-known subset of the National Institutes of Health, and the Chicago Tribune just reported recently on some of the projects that this division of the National Institutes of Health has been funding. Yes, Brian, I must interrupt you for a second here. You have no idea how many of our viewers and friends and members of the JREF actually sent me that on email. They wanted to make sure it came to my attention. It's no surprise to me. Every newspaper that I saw here in Florida had it as essentially a front page item. They were very concerned over this, and rightly so. Millions of dollars have been spent over the past 12 years that NCAM has existed. And let's just go through some of the lists here. We've got 374,000 dollars to study whether inhaling lemon and lavender scents can heal wounds. We've got... No, wait. Hold on. I wonder if our listeners know what you actually said, that you weren't mixing two events there, that smelling something heals a wound. And that is actually, that's what you said, and that's what you meant. This is so preposterous. It doesn't make any sense at all, Brian. I mean, I needn't tell you this, and most of my listeners will agree, I'm sure. It doesn't make any sense whatsoever. Not the faintest shred of logic or rationality is contained in that. But this is a government agency who has given tens of millions of dollars to play with, and they want to keep employed. They want to keep on a project. Why don't you investigate whether lavender smell will heal a broken finger? Yeah, we'll break somebody's finger, his finger, there. Okay. Oh, I'm sorry if it hurt, but this is research. This is science, you see, and we've got money. It's financed by the American taxpayers. Oh, that's okay. That's right. Fine. That seems to be the attitude. They've got to come up with silly projects, no matter how far-fetched in order to just justify their existence. Do you think that there's any justification for studying these kind of things, that all no matter how outlandish something is, when do you think something is worthy of study and when is it just something we should move along from? Well, we could establish a scale. Inhaling lavender is at one end of it, and coffee enemas is really at the other end of it. That whole panel play of the things that the Chicago Tribune examined there and reported on, which, as I said, made such news all over the world. I got a call from the UK on it, even because it showed up in one of the newspapers there. We must look like idiots to the rest of the world when the world is so interested in this particular kind of thing being featured in American news. Yeah, actually, it's $406,000 specifically to study whether coffee enemas can cure pancreatic cancer. I could have done that for $25 until the bill doesn't work. Well, you've got to get the pancreatic cancer patients. I'm sure you have to get some sort of representative sample. That's what amazes me, is that they're able to find people that I assume that if you're in such a state that you're going to consider whether a coffee enemas is going to cure your pancreatic cancer, you must be pretty far down the line of mortality. According to this report, the people who participated in this study lived an average of four months after the coffee enemas. Oh, boy. It's ridiculous. It is so childish. It is so juvenile. When you tell this to a classroom of grade school kids, they'd be on the floor laughing because they know how silly it is that when isn't the, when is the NIH and the NCCAM, which is Senator Harkin's idea, by the way, thanks a lot, Senator. He insisted on that. I don't know whether you know how he got interested in this alternative healing thing, Senator Harkin. No, tell us about it. Very briefly, it doesn't take much telling. He found out that, that it wasn't coffee enemas. What was it? English breakfast tea enemas? No, it wasn't that classy. Some sort of hot drink. It was much less classy than that. But he found out that some sort of thing, he thinks healed some sort of allergy or some other thing that he had. And he had no evidence of that whatsoever. He took some stupid cure. He got better and he said, ah, that must be the reason for it. He might have also said, ah-gah-gaboo, ah-gah-gaboo, ah-gah-gah twice a day. And if he had done that, he would have said, there, that's the incantation. Let's write that down and we'll spend another $400 or so, $1,000 of American tax money on that. This is so damn stupid. There's no other way to describe it. And Senator Harkin had, did they still do tarring and feathering? I'm not sure. Not officially. I got some tar outside here. I would volunteer the tar and I'll shed the feathers if they, if need be. I see a Starling out there. So maybe he, he can be talked to and convinced. Yeah. So what I don't understand also about this is, is why it's so expensive. $1.25 million to study whether massage makes cancer patients feel better. Is it going to make them feel better? Massage makes you feel better when you get your back rubbed or your head rubbed or whatever. It makes you feel better. Does it do anything other than just making you feel better? Then everybody should have it, right? Whether they're cancer patient or not. Let's give it to everybody. We could spend another tens of millions of dollars on that easily. They have the money. They're not restricted. They can spend it on any sort of foolish thing that they want to and they do. Well, according to NCAM director, Dr. Josephine Briggs, she says that they're a $128 million annual budget is less than half of percent of the total budget of the NIH. So what? I'm not denying that the NIH does wonderful work and we need them in operation, but this sort of thing just saps the money off the top and the bottom of all this funding. It is so ridiculous. I can't believe that someone hasn't done something. Where is an angry senator? Where are the angry senator? Where are the Claude peppers now that we need them? We need some people that are going to take time out of campaigning to try to be the next president of the United States to sit still for a minute and think, hey, here's something I could really do something about. Where are the politicians, the movers supposedly, who will move this sort of thing ahead for us? Well, part of the work we do here at the James Randy Educational Foundation, of course, is going after frauds and hucksters who try to sell what they call alternative medicine to helpless people who may not know any better. And if you want to support us now is the time to do so. Just go to randy.org and we would love it if people would donate during our season of reason here at the end of the year. The end of the year is fast approaching. So if you haven't done so yet and you think you might in the future, now is a really good time to. And if anybody wants to ask you a question to be answered here on the Randy Show future episodes, you can go ahead and email me, brian at randy.org, b-r-i-a-n at r-a-n-d-i dot o-r-g and just put Randy Show in the subject line and we will answer some of those on future episodes. So Randy, thanks for being with me today. I got to tell you a joke. We'll close with a joke. Can I do that? Okay, the family gathers around the fellow in the hospital who is having some medical problems and he can't eat. He's got a throat problem. So they have to administer food through another orifice and I'll let you imagine what that is. And they do this in hospitals because some people have to take their nutrients that way. And so the lunchtime arrives and the nurse comes around and she shoes the family where they put an enclosure around the bed. So it won't be embarrassing. And the gentleman is sitting there and the nurse is saying, oh, would you like some coffee? And he says, oh yes, I certainly would enjoy that. And there's a pause and suddenly you hear him hooping and hollering, oh, ah, oh, oh. She says, what's the matter, sir? Had too hot? He says, no, no, too sweet. Maybe we can close this podcast with that. One of the worst jokes I ever heard as a kid, but I did hear it as a kid. So I'm getting a little crazy in my old age. Forgive me, ladies and gentlemen. You're forgiven. The Randy Show is a production of the James Randy Educational Foundation. To learn more about how we promote science and critical thinking, go to randy.org.