Neither author is well-known for his abiding interest in alternative medicine. No examples are given. In fact, there has been remarkably little such promotion, although some is inevitable. The Senator, says Jaroff, forced the NIH bureaucracy to do something they would not otherwise have done. But the Senator's actions represented democracy at its best.
Polls indicate that the public is intensely interested in alternative medicine.
The current leadership of NIH is seriously out of step with the American people. They hate and fear what the public embraces. It is they who are out of line, they who must change. Harkin only reflected the needs and wishes of his constituents and of the broad public. In a democracy the public needs some way to have input into the scientific process that we pay for.