How strange life is. Last year we hardly gave a damn what happened at the National Institutes of Health. NIH was a faceless bureaucracy, part of the octopus-like "cancer establishment." Then the creation of the OAM elicited an enthusiastic response from the alternative community. "Quacks" and "cultists" became real people. Bureaucrats became real people.

How far will this process take us? We donšt know. You will read in this issue about the blustering of quackbusters and the changes at HHS: both potentially troublesome. But there is a momentum to OAM that will not easily be undone.

Some good news is that in early January the HHS Secretary signed an NIH reorganization bill (approved by the Clinton transition team), which made the OfŪce of Alternative Medicine a permanent part of the ofŪce of the NIH director. We are now on a Ūrmer footing.

In addition, the job of principal deputy director was created and Jay Moskowitz was appointed to that post‹a good omen.

Yet the pace at the OAM must be speeded up: e.g., the permanent advisory committee still has not been announced. The longer OAM takes in getting started, the more those old negative attitudes reassert themselves.

I write this the day after Pres. Clinton's [1/93] inauguration. The OAM, too, is about new beginnings. Above all, it is about hope.