Recently, Duke University expanded its reiki program. As of 2021, this pseudoscience has now infested almost a thousand American hospitals and who even knows how many universities like Duke. This infestation is a sign of the times, it seems. Pseudoscience in general has made serious inroads with what should be purely reality-based healthcare and science. But it’s clearly such a crowd-pleaser and money-maker that things won’t be changing any time soon.
Reiki (and its kissin’ cousin healing touch): A quick overview
Reiki is nonsense.
Stephen Barrett, M.D., of Quackwatch (archive)
Back in the mid-1990s, I dated a guy whose mother was a registered nurse (RN). She worked at a major urban hospital with a stellar reputation. I’ve no doubt she brightened the halls there. “Susan” was a lovely, generous, kind, optimistic, supportive, and open-hearted lady. I adored her.
Alas, she was also way, way into two forms of pseudoscience called reiki and healing touch. So were a bunch of her fellow RNs.
Reiki and healing touch are pretty similar. As one infested hospital tells us, both involve pretending to heal someone through the caressing of air—er, I mean, of nonexistent “biofield energy.” Through this air-caressing, a patient’s equally nonexistent “energy field” gains “support and balance.”
The main difference between reiki and healing touch is that in reiki, the person doing the air-caressing has to “attune” to their patient. This attunement is, likewise, completely imaginary. Reiki practitioners get certified in up to three levels, while healing touch has five.
No real evidence supports either form of woo. At best, a few very small (and generally flawed) studies indicate a possible positive effect on anxiety and pain. This possible benefit might be psychological—a natural and expected result from positive interaction with another person (particularly a sympathetic one). Other than that, no evidence supports practitioners’ claims that reiki or healing touch boosts healing in any objective way or results in any visible and measurable physical effect.
That said, the one thing a reiki practitioner should never do, cautions one reiki website, is “send reiki [do the air massage] while a person is in surgery.” Why, one might ask?
The Reiki energy can interfere with the anesthesia in the body and could cause the patient to wake up too soon. As soon as the surgery is complete you can begin sending Reiki.
Rise Above Your Story, “7 Situations where Reiki shouldn’t be used“
And wouldn’t we all just love to know what objective, real-world evidence supports that fantastical claim!
This quackery is already in urban hospitals across North America
Most trials suffered from methodological flaws such as small sample size, inadequate study design and poor reporting. [. . .] In conclusion, the evidence is insufficient to suggest that reiki is an effective treatment for any condition. Therefore the value of reiki remains unproven.
“Effects of reiki in clinical practice: a systematic review of randomised clinical trials,” 2008 (archive)
I didn’t know any of that back then. But I still knew woo when I saw it. When my then-boyfriend’s mom demonstrated one of these pseudoscience treatments on him, I could tell nothing at all was happening. (So could he, thankfully. He never allowed a second try.)
Even as freshly deconverted from Pentecostalism as I was, I knew that both practices were just pseudoscience. As earnest and well-meaning as “John’s” mother was, her ritualistic stroking of the air seemed—to me watching—as empty as prayer on that fateful day I realized I was just talking to the ceiling.
Susan and her fellow nurses were very into this stuff, though. They celebrated when their hospital opened an entire wing devoted to reiki and healing touch.
I, however, was horrified when I heard the news.
I wondered to myself how many sick and desperate people would waste precious time and money on this idiocy, especially once it gained the tacit approval of a big-city hospital.
But I hadn’t seen nothin’ yet.
The woo takeover steadily progresses
Practicing Reiki does not appear to routinely produce high-intensity electromagnetic fields from the heart or hands of Reiki practitioners.
Paper title, 2013 (archive)
By now, reiki can be found in hospitals all over North America. Every so often, someone raises a fuss about it, as Edzard Ernst did in 2011 for the Guardian (archive). In 2017, PBS News Hour ran an article about pseudoscience in hospitals (archive).
But for the most part, the battle appears to be finished and over with. Universities that should be teaching real-world medicine offer courses, getaway wellness spas, and all kinds of resources for people who don’t understand or like real medicine or reality-based health practices. PBS quoted a neurology professor with the Yale School of Medicine as saying, “We’ve become witch doctors.”
I can certainly understand why that professor is upset, too. A quick search on Yale’s website reveals a “Reiki self-treatment” video from 2020. That same search returns 81 other pages on the university’s School of Medicine site. Yale New Haven Health, which collaborates with the Yale School of Medicine, gives a smattering of results as well for various affiliated offices and doctors that allow or practice reiki. Some of those results are for cancer specialists. They feature a testimony from a cancer survivor as well who name-checks reiki as part of her wellness system.
There is something particularly evil about a major university allowing pseudoscience anywhere near people with cancer.
But we needn’t attribute reiki’s takeover to evil. Not when money’s right there on the table to explain everything.
Someone’s making money from this reiki woo, at least
No effects of reiki were found on the FIM or CES-D, although typical effects as a result of age, gender, and time in rehabilitation were detected. Blinded practitioners (sham or reiki) were unable to determine which category they were in. [. . .] Reiki did not have any clinically useful effect on stroke recovery in subacute hospitalized patients receiving standard-of-care rehabilitation therapy.
“Effect of Reiki treatments on functional recovery in patients in poststroke rehabilitation: a pilot study,” 2002 (archive)
If you check out Duke University’s “Health and Well-Being” programs, you’ll notice that they now offer training in all three levels of reiki. And as you would expect when learning any legitimate medical process, Level Three training takes an entire FOURTEEN HOURS spread across TWO entire days.
We needn’t attribute reiki’s takeover to evil. Not when money’s right there on the table to explain everything.
Just to really drive home how completely valid this totally-real medical training is, it is done over Zoom.
Man, that’s just intense, isn’t it?
To qualify for Level Three, reiki students must first have paid for the first two levels of training from an accredited “lineage.” (That’s just woo-speak for a particular school or teacher.) Then, they can learn this completely valid and utterly reality-based and scientific healing skill for about USD$400.
Once our fledgling reiki Level Three masters have gotten their mitts on the D&D sorcery rune Usui Master symbol, they’re ready to fly.
(Related: A sorta-Buddhist cult that also likes itself some magical runes and chanting.)
Reiki is just the beginning of the woo brigade
They [various studies’ results] show no evidence that reiki is either beneficial or harmful in this population. The risk of bias for the included studies was generally rated as unclear or high for most domains, which reduces the certainty of the evidence. [. . .] There is insufficient evidence to say whether or not reiki is useful for people over 16 years of age with anxiety or depression or both.
“Reiki for depression and anxiety,” 2015 (archive)
In addition to their reiki training classes, Duke University runs a number of pseudoscience clinics, seminars, spas, and members-only wellness specialists. They also offer yoga clinics, a whole bunch of mindfulness seminars, and acupuncture-related sessions “for Self-Healing.” Each set of sessions costs over $200.
If someone wants to go on a three-day “Urban Retreat” to learn mindfulness through group therapy, that’ll set them back almost $500. Bonus, though: “No previous meditation experience is required!” So it’s got that going for it, which is nice.
Strangely, Duke’s spokespeople didn’t want to talk to PBS in 2017 about their members-only Integrative Health Medicine department:
Duke Health declined repeated requests for interviews about its rapidly growing integrative medicine center, which charges patients $1,800 a year just for a basic membership, with acupuncture and other treatments billed separately.
“Top U.S. hospitals promote unproven medicine with a side of mysticism,” PBS (archive)
For all their shyness, they still run it, and it still costs the same.
By now, most insurance companies cover at least some pseudoscience. One reiki site gloats (archive) that if someone’s plan covers any kind of massage, then it almost assuredly covers reiki—which, remember, involves no or only whisper-light contact, which makes reiki the polar opposite of massage.
We apparently all now live in Clown World.
Come on, what’s it hurt for hospitals to offer reiki and other forms of total and complete woo to patients?
We noted the ASIRHC [a reiki provider’s business] did not provide robust scientific evidence that substantiated its claims that reiki was an effective therapy for cancer, ADHD, back pain, migraine, depression, anger, low energy, sleeplessness, ADD, sadness, bereavement, tinnitus and sciatica. Because we had not seen any such evidence, and we were not aware of any such evidence that would allow reiki practitioners to make claims that went beyond referring to spiritual or emotional healing, we concluded that the [advertising] claims were misleading.
“British Advertising Authority Upholds Complaint against Allan Sweeney,” 2011, hosted on Quackwatch.org (archive)
One number I’ve seen repeated frequently by woo providers is the “800” American hospitals offering reiki to patients as of about 2021. (You can see one such provider discussing it here; archive) I’m sure that number has only climbed higher in the ensuing two years.
Unfortunately for almost everybody, we’re bound by two constraints that are not easily renewed, if at all: Time and money.
Every penny wasted in one place is one that cannot be spent where it matters. Every hour spent being chanted at and pretend-massaged under the watchful eye of D&D magic runes reiki power symbols is one not being spent on legitimate wellness practices that actually will help someone feel better.
(I don’t really need to invoke Steve Jobs here, do I? I mean, I’m going to anyway. But do I really need to? For all his money and fame, he learned the truth about pseudoscience the hard way.)
Also unfortunately for almost everybody, we’re not medical experts. If an actual hospital run by some big-name place like Yale or Duke University tells us that “dozens” of trials support this or that pseudoscience, most of us will just accept that assessment. And that’s if we even get as far as wondering about it. For most people, just seeing the presence of pseudoscience offerings on the leaderboard will equate to the experts’ complete assurance that it’s legit.
The modern American healthcare system is FUBAR these days. But opening the door to pseudoscience hucksters won’t help anything get better. Not patients, not our shockingly awful health insurance system, and not the healthcare system as a whole. It’ll just make everything worse by prolonging patients’ illnesses and draining wallets that are already far too thin and light.
The only people who win here are the pseudoscience hucksters themselves and the various hospitals, insurance companies, and administrators enabling them for cold hard cash.
40 Comments
Chris Peterson · 12/21/2023 at 10:21 AM
My. How embarrassing for them! I guess they join the ranks of Liberty “University”. Same BS, different god.
Michael Neville · 12/21/2023 at 11:02 AM
Obligatory Mitchell & Webb Homeopathic A&E.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HMGIbOGu8q0
Chris Peterson · 12/21/2023 at 11:12 AM
Of course, when homeopathy was invented, it did “work”. That’s because you were more likely to recover from recoverable medical conditions if you treated them with water than if you treated them with the conventional medical treatments of the time!
And reiki, like many over-the-counter medications, “works” on many things that naturally cure themselves. Might want to think twice about using reiki (or homeopathy) on that tumor, though!
Research into the placebo effect is what Duke needs… not specific placebos.
Captain Cassidy · 12/21/2023 at 6:19 PM
It’s my favorite sketch of theirs!
PS: There’s a part where the “doctors” wave their hands back and forth across the accident victim’s body. That’s what energy work looks like.
Astrin Ymris · 12/21/2023 at 11:33 AM
Wait, isn’t yoga an exercise regime that seems to have real world evidence-based health benefits? Why is that lumped in with reiki?
Chris Peterson · 12/21/2023 at 11:43 AM
Yoga is a strange discipline, that ranges from extreme woo through solid principles of exercise and meditation. Who knows how a program the represents reiki as a serious thing views yoga.
Captain Cassidy · 12/21/2023 at 6:30 PM
There’s a lot of woo in yoga, alas. Taken just as an exercise regime, there is nothing whatsoever wrong with it. I suspect most people just do it as exercise.
As Chris noted, though, put into a CAM perspective on Duke’s page right next to reiki, I got serious woo vibes from it.
BensNewLogIn · 12/21/2023 at 1:11 PM
A few thoughts.
I always thought that Reiki was a type of massage. I did not know that it involved magical passes and positive thinking.
Now, I can only compare it to Chiropractic and acupuncture, also considered pseudoscience. And I have a mixed assessment of both of those. Until about 20 years ago, I had major back problems. I had seen a number of chiropractors, almost every one of which was a moneygrubbing quack: just come and see me three times a week for the next four or five years, and you’ll feel wonderful and my kids will go to college in their new BMW’s.
However, about 20 years ago, I met a chiropractor who actually had talent. He fixed my long-standing back problems to the point where I used to have four or five major debilitating attacks a year that could last for two weeks, I now have half a dozen very minor attacks that last no more than a day or so.
acupuncture is another “pseudoscience”. I’ve seen about six of them in the last 15 years. Three of them were quacks and useless, one of them was a dangerous quack, and two of them have helped me and several other people. I don’t believe that acupuncture works for everything and everyone, but I am absolutely certain that it has worked for me with recurring tendinitis in my elbow, with inflammation problems that responded to nothing else and do not go away on their own, with my husband’s plantar fasciitis, and several other conditions I’ve had which did not respond to anything – except acupuncture. my own doctor, whom I like and respect, told me my choices were surgery or learning to live with these issues. He was wrong about that. Acupuncture worked, and I’ve had enough bad experiences with surgery that I am very wary of it.
Just some food for thought.
Chris Peterson · 12/21/2023 at 1:37 PM
The theory of chiropractic is pure pseuodscience. But the reality is that many practitioners are simply physical therapists. And physical therapy is frequently beneficial.
Acupuncture is similar in some ways. Totally ridiculous theory. But there is some evidence that it has a bit of efficacy for treating minor pain. Just nothing to do with chakras and energy points!
Even “healing touch” can be understood to be of value to some people, as we know that human touch has physical benefits.
But reiki? It’s only value can be through the placebo effect.
BensNewLogIn · 12/22/2023 at 2:25 AM
I agree with your basic premise. Chiropractic or acupuncture are metaphors for something, if metaphor is the right word. Maybe framework to support the talent is a better description.
I have no idea why acupuncture works. It doesn’t work for everything, but it has fixed problems with my elbow, my feet, my husband’s feet, and a bunch of other things over the last 10 years. But it was useless for the muscle and skeletal problems caused by taking statins.
Brian Shanahan · 12/26/2023 at 5:26 AM
Amazingly sham accupuncture (just throwing needles in any old place) shows the exact same evidence for efficacy as “real” accupuncture does. There is a reason the practice virtually died off in 14th century China.
artoroak123 · 12/21/2023 at 4:55 PM
I had a similar and profound experience recently detailed in my comment above. I’m still reeling from suddenly not being crippled after so long. Fcukin’ MAGIC! The mind boggles.
smrnda · 12/21/2023 at 6:08 PM
This made me think of people who act like yoga or tai chi are somehow magical. No, they’re just forms of exercise, and we already know what the benefits would be, since we’ve studied exercise enough.
Attitudes of doctors towards exercise in general, towards specific forms of exercise, and especially exercise for women have changed over time as more info came in. And the actual science takes a while to spread. There are still people who believe that lifting weights will cause you to lose flexibility (but where doing bodyweight exercises that are exactly the same somehow won’t?)
It would be good to have some better studies on alternative treatments, but it seems like we mostly get small ones, and they kind of gain support through word of mouth when someone tries them and they work.
BensNewLogIn · 12/22/2023 at 2:18 AM
I think that people do like the Woo. It makes it special. And if you can believe your physical exercise is a river of Woo flowing through you, well that makes it specialerest.
smrnda · 12/22/2023 at 5:14 PM
I definitely see that, especially with how much people charge for woo. The price also makes it become a status symbol. And that means that the people into woo probably have more money (and likely, better real health care than average) so yes, they seem healthier. But it ain’t the woo.
The money also makes it clear that if the objection to ‘big pharma’ is that it’s all a scam to make money, then the same can be said for ‘big woo.’
BensNewLogIn · 12/24/2023 at 12:52 PM
Absolutely. That also goes for prayer, especially prayer warriors.
Captain Cassidy · 12/21/2023 at 6:28 PM
I agree – there are chiros and chiros. If the chiro talks a lot about “subluxation,” patients needing regular chiro care to avoid problems, chiropractice being a cure for literally everything from acne to cancer, or most especially needing to buy supplements or other woo oils their office sells, avoid that person like the plague.
I had a great chiro right after I hurt my back. It wasn’t a permanent cure, but for that day and a couple after, I felt a lot better and could move around more easily. I wish he’d remained a great chiro. I guess the big real-estate bust hurt his business significantly, because that’s around when he began morphing into the other kind of chiro. I ended up leaving over it. It’s a shame; he really did help me in those super-intense early days of pain. Husband loved him too – for much the same reasons. It’s such a shame.
BensNewLogIn · 12/22/2023 at 2:16 AM
well, that’s actually sad to hear. I think I’ve met exactly 2 chiropractors out of a lot of them that I felt had talent. And of those two, only one was my savior, so to speak. Henry helped a number of people I knew. These were sober and intelligent individuals, not people looking for magical solutions. and I know that with Henry’s help, my friend Erwin got probably an additional six or seven years of life, and nowhere near as much of the pain and weakness that so plagued his early 80s.
I think that there is such a thing as a talent for Chiropractic and acupuncture, though I know some people are going to disagree with me not just on the pseudoscience question, but the talent question. But I know what I know, and I’ve got some good guesses about what I don’t know.
But exactly the same thing is true for doctors and therapists as well, I find that some are very talented at what they do, and someone will never be more than mediocre. As the joke goes, what do they call the guy who graduated 100th in his class of 100 at medical school?
“Dr.”.
I am alive today because my second cardiologist listened to me when I told him about a tiny issue, and then ordered some tests. He personally called me and told me I was about 1/2 inch from a heart attack, and needed to get stents on Monday. If I had stayed with my old cardiologist, I probably would’ve had that heart attack. He had had several opportunities to find out how close I was.
Zaqqum · 12/21/2023 at 2:53 PM
In a past life I worked in the health care field, at a non-hospital employer that nevertheless had plenty of nurses on staff. Every one of them, with the exception of the minority that were some species of fundagelical, was into woo, and reiki or similar practices were high on the list of popular pseudoscientific treatments tey would promote, along with acupuncture and chiropractic. It seemed as though they were into this not for financial gain–woo belief didn’t directly affect their paychecks–but because pseudoscience was trendy and cool, and people said it made them feel good. And like most people, for these nurses personal testimony from patients was the gold standard of truthiness. Religious apologists only wish they had it that easy.
The worst part is, during the seven years I worked in that field, I watched as insurance covered more woo over time. Most plans already covered chiropractic, but the need for prior authorization dropped over time, and then more and more plans began to cover acupuncture as well. When I left, therapeutic touch–aka “energy medicine”–was being paid for by more than a few employers HSA accounts, so it’s only a matter of time before insurance starts paying for that too, I figure.
The reason for the change? Employee demand–everyone else wants to be trendy and cool too. While I don’t doubt the financial benefits woo brings to places like Duke, I suspect most employers would rather not pay for this; but they may fear that their employees will go somewhere else that will. Plus, employers can get employees to put up with more in the workplace if the employees think a quick fix of “healing touch” will make it all better. Finally, most woo practice is still cheaper for insurance to cover (at the moment) than more evidence-based treatment, so there’s some financial incentive to normalize woo after all, it would seem.
And honestly, few of my clients there were silly enough to replace conventional treaments with woo for serious medical issues. Once the rubber hit the road, they turned to science-based medicine, just like religious people do when they quietly realize that prayer isn’t going to cut it for whatever’s going wrong in life. Most people aren’t like Steve Jobs–they never founded a major tech company, and they know when it’s time to stop fooling around with health trends and get real. And the woo purveyors are there to skim the cash when things are safe enough for pretendy-fun-time games.
ericc · 12/22/2023 at 4:08 PM
Three of us in my family have had hospital visits over the past several years, and we saw/got offered none of it. We didn’t even have the nurses offer to pray with us when my dad was basically dying (we would not have been offended, but still, it’s nice that they “followed the family’s lead” by not asking).
So, this is a shout out to all the great MDs and RNs who *don’t* do this. Your professionalism and dedication to real medicine is noted, and you have our gratitude for it. Keep up the good work, and don’t compromise on woo. Your patients *do* appreciate it, even if a “no feedback provided for a not-offered service” is generally the norm.
OldManShadow · 12/21/2023 at 4:41 PM
Amazing, isn’t it?
The Enlightenment and Science have brought us cures for disease and conditions that have plagued humanity for millennia. We have eradicated parasites and diseases. We have antibiotics. We have so much knowledge about the human body. We can prolong life. We can come up with a vaccine for a deadly pandemic in record time…
And it feels like everyone wants to say, “Fuck that shit” and go back to four humours and holding water near your body and waving your hands around someone like an idiot.
Chris Peterson · 12/21/2023 at 7:09 PM
I’ve got a t-shirt that says, “Stupid kills, but not fast enough”.
BensNewLogIn · 12/22/2023 at 2:28 AM
And go back to four humors and holding water near your body and waving your hands around someone like an idiot. ”
Some of us think of that as conducting an orchestra.
artoroak123 · 12/21/2023 at 4:52 PM
I’ve had a weird personal experience recently. I have been crippled since the start of July, unable to walk more than a few steps without a cane, or stand for more than a few minutes. Navigating the public health care system has been a nightmare, and has been dragging out for months. A friend decided to pay out of his pocket for me to visit an acupuncturist he swears by.
I have zero belief in acupuncture as a legitimate kind of medicine, but I wasn’t going to turn down a generous offer from a close friend, so I was happy to go and at least have something to do other than sit around and feel sorry for myself. The person I saw did her thing with the needles, but also included some nice massage, and that was very relaxing.
But this week I got to see the guy my friend wanted me to meet. I’d finally gotten a diagnosis of a slipped lumbar disk instead of the torn SI ligament I’d thought was my problem, and the guy examined how the different sides of my pelvis sat, where my muscles were tensed, etc. Then he did some deep, DEEP tissue massage, using his elbows to press on specific nerve clusters while I moved my leg up, down and sideways. When he got to the needles, every one he sunk hit something that went twang deep inside me. When I went home, I felt a little bruised, so I took things easy and went to bed early.
The next day, I had errands to do. I took my cane with me, but on a hopeful whim, I left it in the car as I walked through a grocery store without limping or leaning on a cart, and stood in line to check out. Last week, that was unthinkable. When I got home, I went for a walk and covered 6 blocks without problem, and without the cane. I did 10 laps up and down my stairs, which have been a major challenge for months. I stopped because I’m out of shape and tired, not because my leg was about to collapse under me. This is after being functionally crippled for 5+ months!
Today I’m going to tackle a long-neglected project in my shop, and will have to sling a 4’x8′ sheet of dense walnut plywood around, and I think I can actually do it!
I think all the talk of meridian lines and chakras is entirely make-believe woo, but there really are nerve clusters and deep interconnection within the human body, and some of that has gotten incorporated into the unscientific nonsense of “alternative medicine.”
I have no idea how to tell the completely useless woo-masters from the actually competent woo-adjacent masters, other than looking at their results.
Captain Cassidy · 12/21/2023 at 6:34 PM
For chiro, I’ve learned this the hard way. Watch for:
Or just visit like you did and see what happens next. I’ve found that good chiros are rarer than hen’s teeth. The real money’s in woo, unfortunately.
artoroak123 · 12/21/2023 at 6:57 PM
I have a good chiropractor I’ve been going to occasionally since the mid-90’s. She knows her stuff, is genuinely useful, and is has a low woo-factor.
Chris Peterson · 12/21/2023 at 7:15 PM
Reminds me of miracle cures resulting from prayer. Lots of respiratory infections cleared up. Not so many amputated limbs restored.
BensNewLogIn · 12/22/2023 at 2:30 AM
An interesting story. I’m glad to hear you’re feeling better.
Your comment is pretty much what I was saying up above..
ericc · 12/22/2023 at 4:21 PM
A slipped disk is basically goo from inside your spinal column leaking out and impinging on a nearby nerve. For all the massive pain it can give (I feel you, I’ve been there), it’s usually a really tiny leak; maybe a few square millimeters of stuff coming out. So it’s not out of the question that a deep tissue massage might move stuff around so that the leakage is not impinging on the nerve as much, or in the same way, or maybe desensitizes the nerve in that area. [shrug] I have no idea…but the point being, there can be perfectly normal, physical explanations for this, because it’s a geometry ‘moving stuff around’ problem and massage literally moves stuff around.
If such massage or treatment reproducibly lessens your pain, I’d say go for it….while you search for a good surgeon to get rid of the problem permanently 😉 (they do it by removing the fluid; my surgeon was excellent and I’m going on 20 years since surgery, never any pain since.)
Ziltoid · 12/24/2023 at 2:02 PM
Not everyone blames alternative medicine for Job’s death.
https://www.livescience.com/16551-steve-jobs-alternative-medicine-pancreatic-cancer-treatment.html
I think he makes some good points about the power of the mind and using alternative medicine as integrative medicine, not as standalone treatment.
Brian Shanahan · 12/26/2023 at 5:45 AM
No, “alternative medicine’s” only use is in enriching the practitioner or whoever the practitioner works for.
To quote Tim Minchin, if alternative medicine worked, it would simply call itself medicine.
I find it interesting that the author of the article doesn’t give any evidence for her claim that “alternative medicine” being of benefit and that she only quoted the only expert she talked to on the nine month wait before Jobs sought treatment being not necessarily harmful in this specific type of cancer. My guess is that in the full interview he had many things to say about “alternative medicine”, none of it good.
Chris Peterson · 12/26/2023 at 10:12 AM
The point is, some actual medicine basically doesn’t work, either. Or is even harmful. Perhaps “alternative” medicine is the best choice there, since there is solid evidence that people making decisions and taking action with respect to their own health does have positive results. Call it the Homeopathy Effect.
Ziltoid · 12/26/2023 at 12:57 PM
That is a blanket oversimplification. I’m not defending alternative medicine, I’m just pointing out that there are MDs who object to the notion it killed Jobs. The point is that, in some cases, people claim that it makes them feel better, so it can be beneficial as an adjunct. The mind is important in healing. Perhaps it can act as a placebo. Here is another article:https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/alternative-medicine-extend-abbreviate-steve-jobs-life/
Brian Shanahan · 12/26/2023 at 5:18 AM
Probably the best way to stop the infestation of woo into hospitals is to explain to people that they’re filthy commies in doing so. As Smrnda explains upthread, the practice was founded by Mao who was to stingy to put a system of proper healthcare in place for the Chinese people, bringing back centuries discredited sham treatments.
WCB · 12/30/2023 at 2:18 AM
Scientology has long supported this sort of nonense. The call it “touch assist”.
Don't Lie to Me · 01/05/2024 at 12:09 AM
I took my son to a hospital for some tests. They asked me if we were religious. I said of course not. Now I might have to ask if they practice real medicine or some sort of Voodoo? Â
We let people sell snake oil. Creams to make women look younger. None work. Weight lose pills that don’t work. Pills that promise things but don’t deliver. They are selling woo. People buy woo. They are buying hope. It is taking advantage of the elderly, those in pain, many that are too trusting. For money as you mentioned.
Do some believe it works? Sure. We know humans can deceive themselves quite easily just as some can deceive others with such woo.
If woo is given the stamp of approval by those in authority then most humans have no chance. They will trust a hospital at Duke knows what it is doing.
Shame on them.
The skeptic in me thinks insurance knows it is cheap and doesn’t work. Patients that die before lots of long term care don’t cost insurance companies much money. Paying for woo and not expensive treatments makes sense for them.
GaryWhittenberger · 01/09/2024 at 7:07 PM
Captain, thank you for this excellent review of Reiki. You are correct on every point.
Chris Peterson · 12/21/2023 at 3:44 PM
Well, you aren’t exactly lying when you put down “energy work”. After all, people are energized by social interaction.
smrnda · 12/21/2023 at 6:01 PM
The money issue made me think of the relatively recent invention of ‘Traditional Chinese Medicine.’ The PRC had promised to send doctors everywhere, but just didn’t have the resources. So they put together a manual of first aid along with a bunch of folk remedies that were made to look like a complete, well thought out system of ‘traditional Chinese medicine.’ The idea was they’d at least give people the impression something was being done, and it didn’t cost a lot.
All said, it’s unfortunate the lack of care provided in many care settings.