I
> _
Acupuncture gets OK from experts
■ A federal committee
cites “clear evidence” that
the 2,000-year-old Chinese
needle therapy works.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Long a
stepchild in American medicine, the
ancient Chinese needle therapy
acupuncture got a limited endorse
ment Wednesday from federal
experts for treatment of some types
and nausea.
.n. committee of medical experts
selected by the National Institutes of
Health cited “clear evidence” that
acupuncture effectively treats pain
after surgery or dental procedures
and controls nausea and vomiting
caused by cancer chemotherapy or
pregnancy.
“We came to the clear-cut deci
sion that the treatment... really did
work” for those limited uses, said
David Ramsay, president of the
University of Maryland, Baltimore,
and chairman of the NIH panel.
“I view this as a beginning to a
better integration of acupuncture
into traditional Western medicine
and to start to take it seriously,”
Ramsay said in a news conference.
The committee report said evi
dence has been found that acupunc
ture also is effective in some patients
for tennis elbow, muscle pain and
menstrual cramps, but the studies
lack convincing proof. The report
recommended more research.
Organizations representing some
4,000 doctors licensed to practice
acupuncture viewed the report as a
clear indication their ancient art is
now becoming part of mainstream
American medicine.
“For the first time there is a pub
lic statement from the Health and
Human Services that acupuncture
might have a role in treating certain
health problems,” said Helga Well
Apelt, a medical doctor who uses
Chinese medicine in her Sarasota,
Fla., practice. “The medical commu
nity always before has ignored
acupuncture.”
“It can now be called real medi
cine,” said Bradley Williams, presi
dent of the American Academy of
Medical Acupuncture, an organiza
tion of about 3,000 doctors certified
to perform acupuncture.
Williams said he hopes the action
will encourage more insurance com
panies to include acupuncture in (
health policies. Only about 10 per- u
cent of health plans offer acupunc- '
ture benefits, he said. Medicare
doesn’t cover the therapy.
Treatments generally cost from
$95 to $125.
Many medical Xv ,
acupuncture practitioners -r-v
lack medical degrees and'
often advertise in telephone £
books with claims of solutions
for a long list of illnesses and dis- v Jp
orders. gm
Acupuncture, practiced in BP;
China for more than 2,000 years,
is a major part of an Asian tradi- V?
tion of medicine that is completely \
different from the European-devel
oped system. The Chinese theory
includes the concept that patterns of
energy, called “qi,” flow through the
body and that disease occurs when
the flow is interrupted.
Needle acupuncture involves
sticking thin, sharpened rods into
specific nerve junction points on the
body. The needles often are rotated
or electrically stimulated.
House approves IRS-altering bill
> _ j
Many u say measure overdue
WASHINGTON <AP) ~ The
House overwhelmingly approved a
bill Wednesday to make the broadest
changes at the IRS in 45 years, with
both Republicans and Democrats
demanding reform after fall hearings
that alleged mismanagement and
abuse of taxpayers.
The measure, approved in a 426-4
vote, would Create a new outside
management board at the Internal
Revenue Service and give taxpayers
more than two dozen new rights.
“We’re starting to get the IRS off
the backs of the American people by
passing legislation that reforms the
IRS,” said House Ways and Means
Chairman Bill Archer, R-Texas.
The House’s top Democrat, Dick
Gephardt of Missouri, described the
bill as “an important step towards
increasing the accountability of the
IRS and to shift the balance of power
back toward the taxpayer.”
Despite this huge vote of
approval, Senate action is unlikely
this year, though House leaders,
Senate Democrats and the Clinton
administration have been pressing for
passage before adjournment this year.
The vote comes as an internal
treasury inspector general’s report
described a range of abuses and mis
management that the new legislation
is supposed to prevent.
The 1993 report* obtained by The
Associated Press, described prob
lems in the IRS Buffalo, N.Y., district
that were strikingly similar to those
aired at Senate Finance Committee
oversight hearings in September:
■ “Numerous complaints” that
IRS Buffalo district managers tried to
manipulate statistics to meet goals so
executives would qualify for merit pay.
■ Collection quotas. The report
cited “intense analysis and pressure
to achieve statistical goals” in tax col
lections.
■ Telephones in the Buffalo dis
trict taxpayer service division were
“fixed” so callers would receive a busy
signal while a computer counted them
as “answered.” These statistics were in
turn used to determine managers’ per
formance and their merit pay.
“The thing that concerned me is
that here you find a report, 5 years
old, that spells out many of the same
problems that we see facing the
agency today,” Finance Chairman
William V Roth Jr., R-Del., said.
Acting IRS Commissioner
Michael Dolan prepared a detailed
response to the report. He turned
away suggestions the IRS didn’t
respond to problems in the 1993
report. The agency conducted inter
nal audits on how it measures tax col
lections and found the problems
described in the Buffalo report were
isolated to that district.
Nevertheless, many members of
Congress described long-standing
complaints from constituents about
treatment at the hands of the IRS.
Republicans made it clear the IRS
overhaul is a step in a broader cam
paign for fundamental tax reform.
“It is almost universal. People are
tired of the current tax code. They’re
tired of how the IRS runs it,” said
House Speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Ga.
“It’s not fair to simply say it’s about the
IRS as an institution. It’s also about the
code they are trying to enforce.”
But Democrats repeatedly said
the problems at the IRS were created
by Congress, which has written a tax
code of nearly 10,000 pages.
The legislation grew from a
bipartisan panel that delivered a
detailed blueprint this summer on
revamping the tax agency.
But the bill gained momentum fol
lowing Senate Finance Committee
hearings in late September where IRS
abuses were vividly described by
agents and taxpayers. The political
momentum following those hearings
prompted the Clinton administration to
reverse course last month and embrace
the bill after sponsors agreed not to
interfere in the president’s ability to
hire and fire the IRS commissioner.
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THE DAILY NEBRASKAN
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Murphy Brown’s
marijuana use
displeases DEA
WASHINGTON (AP) -
Fictional broadcaster Murphy
Brown’s in trouble again with a gov
ernment official. The chief of the
Drug Enforcement Administration
accused the CBS television charac
ter Wednesday of sending a danger
ous message to children by using
marijuana to relieve nausea caused
by chemotherapy.
DEA Administrator Thomas
Constantine said CBS and the show’s
creators were “doing a great disser
vice” by “trivializing drug abuse”
and “pandering to the libertarian
supporters of an ‘open society’ and
to the myths of legalization.”
In Wednesday’s episode, actress
Candice Bergen, who plays televi
sion reporter Brown, is shown smok
ing a marijuana cigarette to quell
nausea produced by chemotherapy
prescribed to treat her breast cancer.
“I am extremely troubled that at a
time when teen-age drug abuse is^
doubling ... a television show of the
caliber of ‘Murphy Brown’ would
portray marijuana as medicine,” said
Constantine.
Iraq may have hidden
sensitive equipment
Weapons-making material moved
during break in U.N. inspections
UNITED NATIONS (AP) -
Taking advantage of a halt to U.N.
arms inspections, Iraq may have
hidden sensitive equipment and
tampered with U.N. surveillance
cameras, a senior U.N. official said
Wednesday.
The chief U.N. weapons inspec
tor, Richard Butler, said his teams
would try to inspect two sites today
“to establish the whereabouts” of
material “which has been moved.”
Butler suspended U.N. weapons
inspections in Iraq last week after
Baghdad ordered the expulsion of
American members of his team.
Butler said the inspections would go
ahead as planned Monday, but they
have been scrubbed for three
straight days because Iraq refused to
admit American inspectors.
The inspections are meant to
verify whether Iraq has destroyed its
weapons of mass destruction. That
was a condition for ending the 1991
Persian Gulf War, in which a U.S.
led coalition drove Iraqi forces from
Kuwait
The United Nations also main
tains surveillance cameras at sensi
tive sites suspected of producing
illegal weapons. The inspectors are
trying to determine if Iraq has com
plied with U.N. orders to destroy all
long-range missiles and weapons of
mass destruction.
In a letter to the Security
Council, Butler said there was evi
dence that the Iraqis have been tam
pering with surveillance equipment
since the field inspections have not
taken place.
“Significant pieces of dual
capable equipment, subject to mon
itoring by the (inspectors’) remote
camera monitoring system have
been moved out of view of the cam
eras,” Butler said.
“The equipment includes, for
example, gyroscope rotor balancing
66
... cameras may
have been tampered
with ... and lighting
turned off...”
Richard Butler
chief U.N. weapons inspector
equipment which could be used to
balance prohibited missile gyro
scopes,” he said.
There was no comment from the
council to the letter, a copy of which
was obtained by The Associated
Press.
In the letter, Butler, an
Australian, noted that movement of
the equipment is prohibited without
U.N. permission “and the equip
ment concerned is subject to contin
uous camera monitoring precisely
because of its easy adaptation to
prohibited activities.”
He said it would “take only a
few hours” to adapt some of the sen
sitive equipment “to produce seed
stocks of biological warfare agent”
“Furthermore, it appears that
cameras may have been intentional
ly tampered with, lenses covered
and lighting turned off in the facili
ties under monitoring,” Butler said.
Butler said he planned to send a
team today to inspect two of the
facilities where cameras may have
been tampered with “to establish the
whereabouts of the ... equipment
which has been moved.”
Destruction of the equipment is
also the main condition for lifting
crippling economic sanctions
imposed on Iraq after President
Saddam Hussein sent his troops into
Kuwait in August 1990.
