EDITORIAL:
LET'S SUPPORT WAYNE JONAS!

From The Cancer Chronicles #26
© Feb. 1995 by Ralph W. Moss, Ph.D.

The Office of Alternative Medicine (OAM) has been in operation for about three years now. Starting up a new office is never easy, but anyone would have a right to be dismayed that OAM has not yet evaluated a single alternative treatment. Whatever the reasons, for 1 1/2 million Americans, whatever OAM does will come too late: they are the ones who have died of cancer during this period. For them and their families no excuses will suffice.

We greet the appointment of a new director of OAM, Lt. Col. Wayne Jonas, M.D., with guarded enthusiasm. Wayne has an excellent background. He received his MD degree from the Bowman Gray School of Medicine in Winston-Salem, NC and currently heads a fellowship training program at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research in Washington, D.C. He also has directed health promotion projects and has had a long-term interest in various alternative medicine techniques, such as homeopathy, electro-acupuncture, nutrition, Quigong and radionics.

While many friends of OAM supported a different candidate, most were genuinely happy when Wayne's appointment was announced. Why then "guarded" enthusiasm?

We wonder if Wayne will be able to do what his predecessors were unable to do? We hope so, and hope to work with him to bring about those much-sought fair evaluations.

But there is an entrenched opposition to evaluating alternative treatments. Certain people have spent decades condemning cancer alternatives. Test Gerson! Test Burzynski! Test IAT! By all means. But what happens if these much maligned treatments work? Where does that leave the quackbusters, with their tedious rants about "questionable" and "unproven" treatments? Truth is, Wayne is going to need all the support he can muster if he intends to take on the quackbusters.

Ralph W. Moss, Ph.D. is the author of many books and documentaries on cancer-related topics. He has been an advisor on alternative cancer treatments to the National Institutes of Health, Columbia University, and the University of Texas. He researches and writes The Moss Reports on cancer. For information, please contact coordinator Anne Beattie @ 144 St. John's Place, Brooklyn, NY 11217; Phone 718-636-4433; Fax 718-636-0186.


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