Hello Everyone
    Due to work and extracurricular activities and a new boyfriend, I
have only been lurking on this echo.  I am sending this message to wish
everyone a belated Happy Easter, and to say that I haven't left the
echo, and haven't had time to check out the Internet newsgroup, either.
    Also, I would like to tell everyone a series of very interesting
trials I am coordinating.
    The first one will go on in May.  A single-blind, cross-over,
clinical trial on the Effects on Pain Management By Acupuncture in
Persons With Aids.  It is underwritten by Friends for Life in Vancouver.
The acupuncturist has had decades of experience with acupuncture [his
father was a traditional doctor], and 5 years' experience treating
patients with AIDS.  The trial will be conducted with absolute scruples
along blinded trials protocols.  There is an invitation for manuscript
from the B.C. Medical Journal already.
    The second one will be at the end of the year.  Again, a
single-blind, cross-over trial on the Effects on Pain Management By
Acupuncture in People Who Have Cancer With Bony Metastasis.
    The third one will require much more fund-raising.  It will be to
determine whether acupuncture would reduce the severity of paralysis in
newly-stroked patients.
    All these trials are funded by patients or their support groups.  No
government or university funding is applied for.
    Then Friends for Life has also entertained the idea of a
double-blind trial on Herbal Medicine and Its Effect On Improving the
Immune System in Persons With AIDS.
    I think the ones for pain control and paralysis reduction may be of
interest to PPS patients.  But the whole thing is very exciting to me
because these are several of the very first controlled studies of
alternative medicine using orthodox study protocols.  The models were
developed in Britain, and I have made refinements on them.  The
participants in the trials will also get full disclosure on the
protocols so they won't have false hopes and delusions of a panacea.
They will even get a post-trial analysis of the results if they wish.
    Boy, us polio survivors, nothing but radicals, triple A
personalities, and rabble-rousers, eh? |-))
... Reality-ometer:  [\........]  Hmmph!  Thought so...
--- FMail 0.94
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