Alternative Therapy for World Trade Center Illness Seeks Funding

After the World Trade Center attack a group was started to give those who are suffering from illness an alternative treatment based on Ayurveda. Saving Those Who Serve wants to help those who have been affected by World Trade Center Illness with an herbal therapy. More than 400 people are taking the regimen twice a day and claim they feel better.

Now Councilman Michael McMahon (D-North Shore), is requesting city funding for Serving Those Who Serve, which aims to get $232,400 from city coffers to help pay for Ayurvedic therapies.
That request for public money raises questions about whether tax-payers’ money should be used for health programs that haven’t scientifically been proven effective.
“I myself took it,” said Paul Cinquemani, vice president of FDNY’s Retirees of Staten Island, who was among the estimated 100 Islanders who have received the pills from the Serving Those Who Serve program. “It took about five months or so. I used to have a tremendous amount of phlegm that seems to have disappeared.”

Critics claim that the alternative remedy is untested and may be unsafe. They worry that the herbal pills may do more harm than good.