Since I seem to be on a roll the last few days discussing cancer quackery, I thought I'd just go with it at least one more day. Frequently, when I get on these rolls laying down the Insolence, both Respectful and not-so-Respectful, over antivaccine quackery I start whining about how I need to change topics, but not this time around, not this topic. It takes a lot more than what I've posted lately to make me feel as though I need a change of pace. Besides, for whatever reason, the blog fodder is flying at me fast and furious, whether it be the dubious testimonial I discussed yesterday, yet another deconstruction of the moral bankruptcy that is Stanislaw Burzynski, or my take on the sheer quackery that is "naturopathic oncology." The first rule of blogging is that you don't talk about blogging. Oh, wait. That's not it. I talk about blogging all the time. The first rule of blogging is: When the world is throwing easy blogging material at you, for cryin' out loud, go for it. Yeah, that's it.
So I'm going for it.
The blog fodder this time around comes in the form of three articles that appeared in ONCOLOGY: Perspectives on Best Practices, an open-access journal about...well, oncology. All three of them are about cancer quackery. Shockingly, in the first article, by Barrie Cassileth, director of all woo integrative oncology at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, and IIan R. Yarett, actually uses the word "quackery" in its title: Cancer Quackery: The Persistent Popularity of Useless, Irrational 'Alternative' Treatments. In it, Cassileth provides a rather standard discussion of bogus cancer treatments that almost could have been written by Orac, were it not for the complete and utter lack of snark, even the subtle snark that academics sneak into papers. She does, however, complain that quacks have appropriated the term "complementary" in order to "use it incorrectly." This complaint derives from how many of these cancer quacks don't actually advocate using their nostrums in addition to conventional therapy but rather in lieu of science-based medicine. Personally, I find this amusing, given that quackademics have no one to blame but themselves for this, given the specific modalities they have tried to "integrate" with science-based medicine. It rather reminds me of the "intelligent design" creationists, craving respectability and crowing to high heaven that they aren't pseudoscientists but real "scientists," taking umbrage at being lumped together with fundamentalist creationists who believe that the earth was created 6,000 years ago with all animals in their current forms. No, Cassileth seems to be saying, we don't associate with that riff-raff. They're fundamentalist loons. We're scientists!
I'll give her some credit for this article, though, and why not? Cassileth lists a fairly standard bunch of quack treatments, the majority of which have been covered on this blog at one time or another, and rips into them. The litany should be familiar: laetrile, shark cartilage, Entelev/Cantron (which I recently discussed, with the comment thread afterward having swollen as of this writing to nearly 1,100 entries), various oxygen therapies (such as hyperbaric oxygen or various means of administering hydrogen peroxide, "energy therapies," which Cassileth admits have no evidence to support them. Given that admission, one wonders why reiki, which is a form of "energy therapy," is offered at MSKCC. Come to think of it, acupuncture is also a form of "energy healing" as well, given its claim to be able to manipulate the flow of qi through the body to healing intent, and MSKCC offers acupuncture as well. That doesn't stop Cassileth from making the dubious claim that acupuncture and other woo have "been shown to be safe and effective as adjunctive treatments for managing pain, nausea, stress, and many other symptoms, and for supporting patient well-being in general," whatever "supporting patient well-being in general" means.
There are other weaknesses. For instance, no mention is made of Gerson therapy, and it is that particular form of quackery, as well as its many variants (such as the Gonzalez protocol and other treatments that loosely fall under the rubric of "metabolic therapies" and often include such lovely interventions as coffee enemas), that is arguably the cancer quackery most heavily promoted right now; that is, unless high dose vitamin C, which never seems to stay dead no matter how many scientific stakes are driven into its heart, isn't the most common quackery. One could only wish that, like the vampires on True Blood, such quackeries would explode into a disgusting blob of blood and tissue when the stake of science is driven through their hearts, but sadly this never seems to happen. Her omissions aside, I can't be too hard on Cassileth. Her article is actually pretty good, by and large, if you can ignore that she is in charge of bringing quackademic medicine into one of the greatest cancer centers in the world. She also makes this statement:
Many alternative approaches to healing are premised on the concept of the mind/body connection, and specifically on the theory that patients can harness the power of their mind to heal their physical ills.[4] Many mind/body techniques, such as meditation and biofeedback, have been shown to reduce stress and promote relaxation, and are effectively and appropriately used as complementary therapies today. However, some proponents of these techniques overpromise, suggesting that emotional stress or other emotional issues can cause diseases like cancer and that correction of these deficiencies through mind-body therapies can effectively treat major illnesses. Such claims are unsupported.
Many of these ideas were promoted by a former Yale surgeon, a popular author who advocated special cancer patient support groups in his books. The importance of a positive attitude was stressed, as was the idea that disease could spring from unmet emotional needs. This belief anguished many cancer patients, who assumed responsibility for getting cancer because of an imperfect emotional status. Among alternative modalities, the mind/body approach has been especially persistent over time, possibly in part because it resonates with the American notion of rugged individualism.[4]
Of course, none of this stops MSKCC from offering "mind-body" services. I guess it's OK to Cassileth because she doesn't promise that such woo will cure the cancer. OK, I'll stop with the snark (at least the snark directed at Cassileth). She's basically correct that there is no evidence that these therapies can impact the natural history of cancer and produce a survival benefit, and I give her props for carpet-bombing the quackery that is the German New Medicine.
Cassileth's article was accompanied by not one, but two, additional commentaries, both of which didn't take issue with the criticism of specific cancer quackeries, such as Entelev, but rather with her statement above about mind-body "healing." Neither of the commentators were happy that Cassileth had questioned the central dogma of alternative medicine, which is what I've been discussing the last couple of days. That central dogma is that if you wish for it hard enough your mind can heal you of anything. The corollary of this central dogma is that if you are ill it is your fault for not having the right "intent," attitude, and thoughts and therefore not doing the right things and/or not believing hard enough. It's not for nothing that I have likened alternative medicine to religion or the New Age woo that is The Secret, and these authors simply reinforce that view. First up is radiation oncologist and practitioner of "integrative oncology" Brian D. Lawenda, MD, who pens Quackery, Placebos, and Other Thoughts: An Integrative Oncologist’s Perspective.
In the first part of his article, Lawenda protests loudly, arguing that "not all therapies categorized as 'alternative,' 'nonconventional,' or 'unconventional' are completely ineffective." I suppose it depends on what you mean by "completely ineffective." Personally, when I say "completely ineffective," I mean "indistinguishable from placebo." That's the usual definition of "ineffective" in medical circles, and it is a description that applies to the vast majority of "integrative oncology," including acupuncture, therapeutic touch, reiki, and the like. In the case of acupuncture, for instance, it doesn't matter where you stick the needles or even if you stick the needles in at all (a toothpick twirled against the skin will do as well or better). In other words, in the case of acupuncture, the effects are entirely nonspecific. Indeed, Lawenda's claim that these therapies are being used in an "evidence-based" manner is almost as overblown as the claims that quacks make; real "evidence-based" use of the vast majority of these modalities would be not to use them at all. They don't work. That doesn't stop Lawenda from advocating placebo medicine. But first he has to remonstrate with Cassileth over her characterization of "mind-body" medicine:
One area of controversy that comes up often in integrative oncology circles is whether or not there is an association between chronic stress and cancer-specific outcomes. Dr. Cassileth asserts that the association between chronic stress and cancer development, progression, and recurrence has not been definitively established. Those who support this view might categorize as quackery the claim that stress reduction (eg, through lifestyle changes, mind-body therapies, etc) can improve cancer-specific outcomes.
Those who believe that chronic stress and cancer are linked cite data that support this claim. In particular, there are clinical studies[7] that report improvements in cancer-specific outcomes in patients who are taught stress management techniques. Furthermore, researchers continue to identify chronic stress as a causative factor in numerous pathophysiologic processes that are known to be associated with the development, progression, and recurrence of various cancers (eg, stimulation of systemic inflammation and oxidation, impairment of immune function, increases in insulin resistance and weight gain, etc).[8]
Lawenda overstates his case massively. The evidence that improving "attitude" improves cancer-specific survival is of shockingly low quality. There's just no "there" there. As I've said before, that's not to say that psychotherapy and other modalities designed to improve a patient's mood and mental state might not be useful. Certainly, they can improve quality of life, used in the proper situation. However, there just isn't any evidence that is even mildly convincing that such modalities can improve a patient's chances of surviving his cancer.
I also know that Lawenda is laying down pure, grade-A woo when I see him retreating into the favorite alt-med trope, "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence" and claiming that "many alternative therapies, once believed by conventional medical practitioners to be merely placebos, have now been shown to have proven therapeutic value (eg, acupuncture, numerous botanical extracts, meditation)." Well, no. Acupuncture has not been convincingly shown to have therapeutic value for any condition, and it's no surprise that botanical extracts might be effective for some things; they are, after all, drugs. Adulterated drugs with lots of impurities whose potency can vary widely from lot to lot, but drugs nonetheless. He even attacks antidepressants based on more recent evidence suggesting that they might not be as effective as previously thought and in some cases might not be better than placebo, an idea ably countered by James Coyne.
Lawenda's rebuke, however, is nothing compared to what comes next. Remember Cassileth's dismissal of the findings of a "Yale surgeon" who claimed that support groups improved cancer survival? Here comes that Yale surgeon! Yes, indeed. It's Bernie Siegel, and he's pissed, proclaiming that The Key to Reducing Quackery Lies in Healing Patients and Treating Their Experience. Of course, his carefully cultivated image of being the ultimate nice guy and caring physician can't be endangered; I only infer his annoyance from the tone of his response. I also infer a lot from the fact that, unlike Lawenda and Cassileth, who at least include some references taken from the peer-reviewed scientific literature to support their points, Siegel cites exactly one reference, and one reference only, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's Cancer Ward. Lawenda cites mostly poor quality studies, but at least he tries by citing studies. Siegel, on the other hand, seems to think he is the Great and Powerful Oz (Dr. Oz or the Wizard of Oz, take your pick) and that you should just take his pronouncements on faith because he is so awesome. I will admit that Siegel probably has a point when he says that better communication could potentially reduce the incidence of cancer patients turning to quackery, but even making this reasonable point he overstates his case when he says that quackery would "diminish greatly" if doctors would just learn to communicate better. There's a lot more to the appeal of quackery than having a doctor who can't communicate, much of which wouldn't even come close to disappearing, even if every doctor turned into a Bernie Siegel clone with respect to showing incredible empathy to patients.
Siegel then dives right in, relying on the sheer force of that awesome empathy of his to rip Cassileth a new one for daring to criticize his work:
Our emotions govern our internal chemistry, and hope is therapeutic. We know that laughter enhances survival time in cancer patients, while loneliness has a negative effect. When a Yale graduate student did a study on our support group members and it showed increased survival time for the group’s members, his professor told him that couldn’t be true and made him change the control group so that everything came out equal. Doctors don’t study survival and the power of the mind.
Which is, of course, utter nonsense, leavened with more than a little conspiracy mongering. Doctors have been studying the "power of the mind" and survival for a very long time. What Siegel doesn't like is that they haven't found that the mind is nearly as powerful as Siegel would like to believe. It's a topic I've been writing about since the very beginning. There's a reason for the central dogma of alternative medicine; it's very appealing to believe that sheer force of will or thinking happy thoughts can heal us of serious diseases. Talk about the ultimate form of "empowerment"!
Siegel then goes completely off the deep end:
The mind and energy will be therapies of the future. I know of patients who were not irradiated because the therapy machine was being repaired and no radioactive material was reinserted. The radiation therapist told me about it because he was feeling terrible. I told him he didn’t know what he was saying to me. “You’d have to be an idiot to not know you weren’t treating people for a month—so obviously they had side effects and shrinking tumors, which was why you assumed they were being treated.” He said, “Oh my God, you’re right.” I couldn’t get him to write an article about it. I also have patients who have no side effects because they get out of the way and let the radiation go to their tumor.
Yes, an unsubstantiated anecdote about an apparently incompetent radiation oncology tech who didn't notice that his radiation machine wasn't actually delivering radiation trumps evidence, apparently. (One wonders how the machine still functioned if its source wasn't re-inserted. Most such machines have a warning light or won't turn on if the source isn't properly in place.) Siegel's article is so full of alt-med tropes and a heaping' helpin' of what can best be described as pure woo. Besides recommending his own books (one of which I actually have on my shelf but have not gotten around to reading), Siegel recommends The Energy Cure: Unraveling the Mystery of Hands-On Healing by William Bengston, The Biology of Belief: Unleashing the Power of Consciousness, Matter & Miracles by Bruce Lipton, and The Psychobiology of Gene Expression by Ernest Rossi. Lipton, as you recall, is a cell biologist who abandoned “conventional” biology after having some sort of mystical revelation about cells that led him to conclude that God must exist and that “holistic” therapies work. I hadn't heard of the other two, but Siegel describes Bengston thusly:
Bengston cured mice of cancer in a controlled study with the energy conducted through his hands. I was healed of an injury in the same way by healer Olga Worral many years ago. We definitely need to test potential therapies to verify whether or not they are useful, but we also have to keep an open mind to what might be possible, and we must understand that we are treating a patient’s experience and not just a disease.
It turns out that Bengston preaches exactly the sort of quackery that Cassileth quite correctly castigated, namely that energy healing can cure cancer! From his own website:
Can energy healing really cure cancer? Is it possible for you to heal someone's terminal illness with your bare hands? Is the Western medical community ready for a fundamental change in its approach to treatment?...Dr. William Bengston invites you to decide by taking a journey with him into the mystery and power of hands-on healing. Drawing on his 30 years of rigorous research, unbelievable results, and mind-bending questions, Bengston challenges us to totally rethink what we believe about our ability to heal.
As there so frequently is after a book advertisement, there are blurbs with people saying how great Bengston's book is. Guess who gave Bengston a plug. Yes, Bernie Siegel. I must say, I had no idea that Siegel was so deep into woo. Elsewhere in his article he says he had chronic Lyme disease and was helped by homeopathic remedies. He even says that he "knows they work" because of his "experience of having the symptoms of the disease alleviated." It doesn't get much quackier than energy healing and homeopathy. They are the two most ridiculous quackeries out there, and Bernie Siegel is promoting them both.
Siegel concludes:
I was a pediatric surgeon and a general surgeon, and I know how powerful my words were to the children—and adults—who believed in me. I had no problem deceiving children into health by labeling vitamin pills as medications to prevent nausea and hair loss, or telling them the alcohol (Drug information on alcohol) sponge would numb their skin (and of course, sharing this with their parents, who helped empower their child’s belief). The mind and attitude are powerful healing forces. The mind and body do communicate, so I work with patients’ dreams and drawings and have diagnosed illnesses from them. I have yet to meet a physician who was told in medical school that Carl Jung correctly diagnosed a brain tumor by interpreting a patient’s dream.
This may not seem related to the subject of quackery, but it is—because it is about how to train doctors so that they know how to provide hope and potential to patients and how to use the mind and placebo effects. Doctors’ “wordswordswords” can become “swordswordswords” and kill or cure patients. I know a man who had cancer and needed cataract surgery so he could enjoy the life that remained to him with restored vision. His health plan denied the surgery because they expected him to die within 6 months and didn’t want to spend the money. He died in a week. The Lockerbie Bomber was released by the Scottish authorities because he was dying of cancer. He went back home to the Middle East and survived for over 3 years— and that is no coincidence.
Note the mind-body dualism ("the mind and body do communicate"). Of course they do, because the mind is the brain, and the brain is in constant communication with the body! That doesn't mean you can think yourself healthy. Remember how I discussed some time ago the way that this increasing emphasis on placebo medicine among promoters of "integrative medicine." As I've said so many times before, the reason IM fans have taken this position is because they're finally being forced to accept that high quality evidence shows that most alt-med nostrums rebranded as "CAM" or "integrative medicine" produce nonspecific effects no better than placebo. So these nonspecific effects get relabeled as the "powerful placebo," as proponents of "integrating" quackery into real medicine pivot on the proverbial dime and say that's how their favored therapies worked all along, by firing up placebo effects! It's pure paternalism, as well, as I have discussed multiple times.
Siegel claims he's "unleashing the healing power" in each of us, but what he is really doing is advocating a return to the paternalistic, unquestioned, shaman-healer so common in so many societies in pre-scientific times. In ancient Egypt, physicians were also priests; both functions were one, which made sense given how little effective medicine there was. Praying to the gods for patients to get better was in most cases as good as anything those ancient physicians could do. Also notice how, to Siegel, apparently the end justifies the means. Siegel can deceive patients about vitamins and alcohol sponges because he thinks it's all for a greater good, really believing that he is so all-powerful a shaman-healer that his words alone can have a huge effect in curing or killing patients. That's how he appears to be justifying the deception. He needs to get a clue (and some humility) and realize that, although placebo effects are important confounders in clinical trials, it's a huge stretch to ascribe such awesome power to their effects. What Siegel is describing is magic, not science; religion, not medicine. Thinking does not make it so.
Unfortunately, Cassileth doesn't seem to realize that, at their core, the "unconventional" aspects of the "integrative medicine" that she is promoting are little or no different than what Siegel promotes. In essence, "integrative medicine" is all about "integrating" magical thinking into scientific medicine. Acupuncture, "mind-body" interventions, reiki, and all the various quackademic medicine that has infiltrated medical academia relies on the same ideas, the same magical thinking, that we see on display from Bernie Siegel. Cassileth might think herself so much more rational and "evidence-based" by attacking the most egregrious cancer quackery, but she's only fooling herself.
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I knew it.
Flounce off, only to return a few weeks later hoping nobody would notice that she's trying to resurrect an argument she lost five times over already.
If she thinks she's going to have the last word, she's wrong.
"Alloville" is presumably some fictional late 18th century town where allopathy is still used. Perhaps Marg has a secret time machine that runs on qi.
@JCG
Unbelievable narrowmindedness. Total lack of curiosity about what else might be out there beyond narrow materialism.
@Flip
Boo.
It has already been explained to you that monist materialism is entirely unnecessary to the observation that your assertion of magical powers is a load of crap.
@Marg
Well played. After being asked numerous times for evidence for your claims, support for your assertions and definitions of your ideas, the best retort you can come up with is...
I shall now tell my doctor to shove his prescriptions, find myself an energy healer and devote my life to postmodernism. Quite clearly "boo" is just so convincing I could do nothing else but change my mind.
-- On a non-sarcastic point, the whole reason I'm here is because I'm curious. Why are you here again?
A number of us have taken the time and trouble to read Bengston's articles and paper, and to look at various other bits and pieces you have linked to; I certainly have. Just because we are unconvinced by the poor quality of evidence you have presented doesn't mean we are narrow-minded.
As I have told you I personally experimented with 'energy healing' on and off over a period of several years, though I never charged anyone money or made any promises. I came to the conclusion that it can all be explained by suggestion and expectation, especially when I found that very similar results can be obtained using 'hypnosis'. What's narrow-minded or incurious about that?
On the other hand you don't appear to have taken the trouble to read anything any of us have suggested, or even seriously considered the possibility that you have been fooling yourself. To quote Richard Feynman:
I know who I think has been narrow-minded in this exchange.
Gentlemen:
I believe that Mercola has a cartoon or video on his woo-drenched website ( that I've never clicked on) titled "Welcome to Allopathville" or suchlike.
But at any rate, we are living in a material world etc.
Of course it does. Marg wants to have her cake and eat it too: she wants us to simply take her assertions on her word alone, without evidence. But she also wants to provide evidence that proves that she's right and we're wrong. We're not taking her experiences as true, so we're narrow minded. We're not taking her evidence as true, so we're narrow minded.
Unfortunately for her, the former doesn't work and the latter is unconvincing. The fact that her debate style is like that of a high school girl doesn't help either.
Has someone previously mentioned the Dunning-Kruger effect on this thread? If not - or even if it has - it should be.
It's Aliiiive
Marg, I'll wager you market your vapor wares as holistic or at least consider them so
Yet you fail to understand that your merch renders this universe entirely non-holistic. How so?
On the one hand we have the thing that appears to quite accurately, if incompletely, describe the cosmos. From the smallest particle to the largest galaxy this thing has given us a means to understand our home and ourselves far better than ever before.
Did you know the Chinese had naval cruise missiles in the 1300s? They left drawings. And multi-stage rockets, land mines and hand grenades too. Christian Europe had the plague although they may have had relearned siege engines by then IIRC.
Everything around you can be described by combinations of things on the periodic table, unless you think there are only five elements? Add physics, chemistry, biology and mathematics and what have you got - science. And it works despite the fallibility of the talking monkeys that employ it.
And on the other hand... waving hands.
Not only for "healing", but at the scads of evidence provided by that other thing, science, that shows energy healing to be snake oil.
You seem to think because we don't know some things we don't know anything as fact and that it is of no major consequence that what you sell runs completely against these facts as established by science. Not complementary or adjunctive, diametrically opposed to the point of exclusivity.
Like religion, there is no reconciling these ideas no matter how Orwell or Sumfisticated Theological you get. This is not holism.
I started watching The Secret. A guy with a PhD says "Do you know how electricity works? I don't. But it does. And so The Secret works."
I turned it off laughing at a guy who went so far without paying attention to middle school science class.
Convenient that I happened to have recently written up Doggerel #9 in the new series, about how "open-minded" is abused and misunderstood. Embedded one of Qualia Soup's videos, since he does it better.
Of course, I think we have plenty of reason to believe that Marg is here to rehearse her prejudices, rather than honestly have a conversation. The earlier invocation of Sheldrake doesn't do her any favors, either. Yakaru's working on that.
Marg, no one here is being narrow-minded, and I'm quite curious about what else is out there--it's why I became a scientist in the first place. So I'll quite happily consider any evidence you care to present supporting your claim that energy healing is a real phenomenon and can actually treat illness and/or injury.
The problem is simply that you haven't provided any such evidence to be either open-or close-minded about--in fact, it appears lately that you've given up trying altogether and your most recent posts are simply an attempt to distract attention from your failure to do so.
yep, other than the Divine Miss M (apopologies to Bette), and I've been interested in quackery since I saw "Little Big Man" when it was released and intro'd me to Allardyce -> Barnum -> Randi
More Ben Goldacre on Gold Standard pharmaceutical medicine.
http://www.badscience.net/2012/09/heres-the-intro-to-my-new-book/
"Drugs are tested by the people who manufacture them, in poorly designed trials, on hopelessly small numbers of weird, unrepresentative patients, and analysed using techniques which are flawed by design, in such a way that they exaggerate the benefits of treatments. Unsurprisingly, these trials tend to produce results that favour the manufacturer. When trials throw up results that companies don’t like, they are perfectly entitled to hide them from doctors and patients, so we only ever see a distorted picture of any drug’s true effects. Regulators see most of the trial data, but only from early on in its life, and even then they don’t give this data to doctors or patients, or even to other parts of government. This distorted evidence is then communicated and applied in a distorted fashion. In their forty years of practice after leaving medical school, doctors hear about what works through ad hoc oral traditions, from sales reps, colleagues or journals. But those colleagues can be in the pay of drug companies – often undisclosed – and the journals are too. And so are the patient groups. And finally, academic papers, which everyone thinks of as objective, are often covertly planned and written by people who work directly for the companies, without disclosure. Sometimes whole academic journals are even owned outright by one drug company. Aside from all this, for several of the most important and enduring problems in medicine, we have no idea what the best treatment is, because it’s not in anyone’s financial interest to conduct any trials at all. These are ongoing problems, and although people have claimed to fix many of them, for the most part, they have failed; so all these problems persist, but worse than ever, because now people can pretend that everything is fine after all.
That’s a lot to stand up, and the details are much more horrific than this paragraph makes it sound. There are some individual stories that will make you seriously question the integrity of the individuals involved; some that will make you angry; and some, I suspect, that might make you very sad. But I hope you will come to see that this is not just a book[2] about bad people. In fact, it’s possible for good people, in perversely designed systems, to casually perpetrate acts of great harm on strangers, sometimes without ever realising it. The current regulations – for companies, doctors and researchers – create perverse incentives; and we’ll have better luck fixing those broken systems than we will ever have trying to rid the world of avarice."
The issue is one of bias: pharmaceuticals are tested with a bias towards success; alternative medicines are tested with a bias towards failure.
Everybody who is a regular reader of this blog and contributor to the RI-returned is aware of serious issues around documented questionable practices of pharma.
This is not sufficient reason to accept the fanciful nonsense of the "alternative medicines" you have touted here.
This also does no invalidate the clear efficacy of pharma products and the life-saving contributions of pharma R & D. Gertrude B. Elion comes to mind.
Marg, if alternative medicine is tested with a bias towards failure, how precisely is that bias enacted? Intention isn't magic. You can't simply will a test result into failure, you have to actually do something that biases it.
Of course, that's the opposite of what I see: Altie gurus use sloppy, bias-inducing test protocols. Scientists retest with higher quality protocols to eliminate known causes of bias, and only then does the benefit vanish.
@Marg - care to explain why such huge numbers of drugs and treatments never make it through the testing process? If the problem was as large as you claim, drug companies wouldn't have to worry about having any of their drugs rejected....but the fact is for every treatment that does make it to market, almost 100 do not....care to explain?
Marg,
We discussed Ben Goldacre and his work to improve the way drug trials are done and reported above. I have been following this for years, and I have even corresponded with Dr. Goldacre about it in the past. I fully support what he is trying to do, and I'm sure most people commenting here do too. What Dr. Goldacre has written does not in any way support your claims. He is concerned about the pharmaceutical industry exaggerating the benefits of their products, he isn't claiming that drugs don't work at all. I am quite sure that he doesn't believe in energy medicine, or acupuncture, and I know he doesn't believe in homeopathy, or even in the ability of fish oil to improve children's school performance. Here he talks about 'detox' (on a boat apparently). Much of what he says about the "childish magic rituals" surrounding detox apply just as well to energy healing.
By the way, I can cherry-pick from what he wrote too:
You will find systematic reviews mentioned a lot on this blog, and in the comments, because most of us here understand these issues quite well.
There's a small amount of bad language on the Goldacre video I linked to so perhaps not safe for work on speakers.
Marg's more interested in tearing down the competition than demonstrating a safer, more effective product. She's essentially trying to get our vote by slinging mud instead of proposing good policy.
From what I've seen of Goldacre, he's one of us. Of course there's bias in the pharmaceutical industry, and we want to do something about that. They provide some good products, so it's worth the effort to clear out the corruption. Marg is so confused about our position on the issue, she doesn't recognize she's using one of us to beat down her straw man.
Quacks, on the other hand, provide no benefit and demand we be tolerant of even greater corruption. What the pharmaceutical companies do is peanuts compared to that.
@marg
Thank you for that blatant example of Dunning-Kreuger.
Honestly, do you purposely make yourself look that ignorant and idiotic?
Yes Marg - saying one thing it bad does not make something else automatically good......
I just want to reiterate one thing Dr. Goldacre wrote:
Whereas energy healing, acupuncture, homeopathy and wishful thinking have produced what?
oh crap, I hope I didn't italicize the blog again!
nope, just blockquote fail. (whew!) I was answering Krebiozen's question above.
And so your suggestion is to do the opposite of what Goldacre is talking about and lower the bar for whatever random occultist jetsam you happen to disgorge? "If only my shooting of magic energy beams out of my hands channeled from the multiverse through my cosmic pineal gland were held to the same standard as drug trials, it would be skies of blooo! Skies of blooo! It's so unfair!"
What's often hilarious to me is that quacks present themselves as the reformers- they will take what Goldacre says and extract anything he says that is positive about pharmaceuticals so that he sounds like one of THEM. I've heard BG's new book discussed @ PRN.
They assume that they are their audiences' only source of information so they lie.
Marg, if there's such a bias towards success why do so few drugs which enter clinical testing successfully pass Phase I, II and III clinical trials and receive FDA/EMEA approval? Overall the failure rate is about 9%, while for some indications it's even higher (for oncology, for example, only 5% of drugs entering Phase I trials achieve approval). (per centage as of 2006). Why, in the absence of that 'bias towards success' it's hard to belevie we'd be approving any drugs at all...
In any event, since we're not proposing energy healing to be held to a different standard than science based drugs and therapies—only that energy healing, etc., be held to the exact same standard of proof of efficacy and safety science based medicine has been—energy healing would benefit from whatever 'bias toward success' might exist as well.
I wonder if Marg knows what an RSS reader is. She seems to think no one will notice if she just waits long enough for the conversation to die and then *pounce*.
In fact she has so little to offer that her tactics have now been reduced to hit and run...
Whereas energy healing, acupuncture, homeopathy and wishful thinking have produced what?
Successful efforts to have this scheisse re-branded healthcare and covered by Alberta @ $500/yr per family. Allowed a chiroquackupuncturist to become the mandarin over science/technology in $nottawa...
Marg seems to think reforming healthcare by ditching the scientific method will ameliorate the valid concerns Goldacre raises when it would be legislation requiring pharma to be more transparent etc in their application of it.
The refutation of The Rosa Protocol is also very homeopathic. The professional energy healers decided before being tested which of her hands was easier to almost feel which trumps the weak sauce presented as counter by being perfectly representative of the claimed ability to feel and manipulate the HEF.
This test of alleged psychics in London published yesterday reminded me of Emily Rosa's experiment. Both psychics were confident they could easily pass the test. Both failed. Both came up with excuses for their failure afterwards.
http://chrisbeatcancer.com/are-cancer-patients-hopes-for-chemo-too-high…
Study shows that most people with advanced cancer believe that chemo is going to cure them. Oncologists ARE peddling false hope.
Marg, where are the doctors telling them these unrealistic hopes? Patient belief isn't directly a result of what the doctors promise. Humans have amazing capacity for denial built right in.
Example of the opposite: the people who think they were sent home to die when the doctors gave them a good prognosis and told them there wasn't anything else left to do.
@marg
Thank you again for proving your utter stupidity and ignorance.
My favorite mother-in-law has lung cancer. Based on what I've been told, nobody is telling her that conventional treatment will cure her.
Yes, anecdote.
Marg, do you believe that energy healing can cure cancer, as the commenter you linked to does?
What do you believe a reasonable price would be for an energy-based cancer treatment regimen? Or would you just 'accept donations' instead?
Talk about peddling false hope.
Ergo, telling people that magic beams of "healing rays" from the hands (one item that Marg has never managed to address in any way, shape, or form) is curative of cancer is fine. Your new gambit is just as crappy as all the rest, Marg.
Marg, I've said it before and I'll say it again: you lecturing about the weaknesses of the modern medical system is like Idi Amin preaching about human rights. As long as you're backing the ridiculous modality of "energy healing" you are in no position to throw stones at modalities that, unlike yours, can actually show efficacy better than placebo.
Why the hell do you keep humiliating yourself with this, Marg? When are you going to realize that those magic beans you bought are simply not worth what you paid for them? When are you going to stop throwing throwing good time and energy after bad - not to mention trying to throw our time and energy down the same craphole?
Yep, definitely just doing the hit and run now.
Surely this thread can die already?
I'd recommend stopping posting every time she does, but quite clearly she just wants the last word.
The only reasonable* conclusion to draw from the hit-and-run subject changes is that we (mostly you) explain the issue so well she can't think of any refutation or question on the issue.
So think of it as educating and reforming Marg one mistaken CAM-blog induced statement at a time.
* Unless you believe there are people out there more stubborn than rational.
gaist - yes, yes there are people more stubborn
Marg - never have I been sold a bill of goods by a real healthcare professional and having a positive attitude is now a bad thing?
Anecdotes
- father died primarily of lung cancer in Feb 88 after being given a dire prognosis the prev Oct and sent home to die because there was nothing left to do
- buddy died Aug 90 of ALS roughly two years after being given the dire prognosis that he might have two years because there's nothing left to do
that's when the woomeisters, circling always circling, swooped in with their "science doesn't know everything" this and "holistic" that and did nothing but drain their wallets with the hope of a cure.
Marg sees nothing wrong with charging $7500 for this while at the same time decrying the grandiose of her "profession".
reprehensible
not to be such an anecdotal downer, a niece was diagnosed with cancer at 18 and told she had a good chance and was warned of side effects (as was I).
10 years later, still cancer free and side effects? She was hardly affected at all and missed very little university other than appointments with the holistic shaman who cared for her.
The study comes from the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. But, hey, don't believe your own people either when the news doesn't fit your worldview.
Marg, did you even read the article you linked to?
If so it's hard to understand how you completely missed the following, to falsely claim it argues oncologists are selling false hope:
Marg, did you even read our responses?
Marg,
You are championing treatments that don't work, and con artists who who despicably prey on the dying, charging exorbitant amounts of money for these utterly useless treatments. Yet you have the gall to criticize those who offer treatments that do extend life and increase its quality, because patients hope they will do more? Have you the faintest idea how sick that makes you sound?
I notice that someone called Judith claims in the comments on that story that there are "alternatives that could actually do them far more good than the chemo they are being given". I wonder what alternatives she has in mind that work better than chemo, because I have searched high and low for them and I can't find any.
We know that in practice those who pursue alternative cancer treatments have a poorer life expectancy and in many cases a poorer quality of life, not least because they often reject (or can't afford) palliative care. The Gonzalez study is a good example of this. I'm sure the likes of Judith have good intentions, but the damage they do with this delusional magical thinking is very real. Maybe she doesn't understand what dying of cancer with nothing but woo is really like?
For the record, Marg, I wasn't challenging the article, I was challenging your interpretation of it.
Or, rather, the way you introduced it seemed to beg me to point out the big leap between your description of the article's thesis and the apparently unjustified conclusion you drew from it. The fact that you apparently made that leap suggests to me that you think cancer patients are electric monks, not human beings.
@Krebiozen
FYI, you are also championing treatments that don't work.
Which treatments that don't work, for what illnesses, is Krebiozen championing? Be specific.
Also, if you read Judith's blog, you'll see she says that in her experience people do better with palliative energy treatments than palliative chemo.
Yup, Marg's still playing the game of "I know what you are, but what am I?" She can't provide any evidence that energy medicine works, so she continues to grasp at straws in the form of chemotherapy's imperfect nature.
I also notice she's chosen to get vaguer about the topic, so I doubt she'd elaborate by responding to my earlier critical thinking question or posited alternate explanation. If she read that article she cited, it'd be a simple matter of quoting a relevant bit instead of hurling vague implications and straw men.
Can she offer something other than personal anecdote to support her claim that palliative energy treatments outperform palliative chemotherapy? If not you're wasting your (and our) time mentioning it.
The hand-waving business must be slow right now.
Marg,
I suggested that chemotherapy for the conditions (metastatic lung or colorectal cancer) mentioned in the paper referred to in that article does "extend life and increase its quality". Let's see if that''s true.
For non small cell metastatic lung cancer a number of chemotherapeutic agents are used in combination, see this systematic review (remember what Ben Goldacre wrote?) and meta-analysis which concludes:
It also mentions that:
How about metastatic colorectal cancer? Here's another systematic review that concludes that treatment can increase life expectancy from 8 months to as much as 24 months.
FYI you're wrong.
Although business may be slow , there is always a market for telling people what they want to hear - words of comfort news that the situation isn't that bad, 'breaking it to them gently'...as a certain gentleman I know says, " I give them the mild version FIRST... so they get used to the idea" - however his business doesn't involve health or lying..
SBM has to consider people's emotional reactions to bad news - imagine what it feels like to be given a poor prognosis: there must be a sort of roaring going on inside of your head as adrenalin surges and your field of vision narrows to a tunnel; imagine that you would feel like in the days following, as your pulse pounds and your attention narrows to one or two words that you don't want to hear.
Woo-meisters take advantage of people at their most vulnerable. Telling people the 'mild version' and not continuing on to the entire truth and promising what you can't deliver are actually cruelties.
I'm reminded of a Fark meme my brother mentioned to me, and Marg seems to be doing the equivalent. When a Republican politician was criticized for doing something, a Republican would typically show up in the thread and instead of defending the politician, try to claim an equivalent shortcoming in a Democrat. The Farker response was often, "Both sides are bad, so vote Republican?" The possibility never enters the troll's mind that some people might be independent, third party, dissenters within the Democratic party, or anything other than a blindly loyal partisans.
That's why I think this is a political issue with Marg. She can only see things in terms of a two-party system, painting us as pharma absolutists when we're not. The two-party system of alties and conventional medication is a marketing invention she's fallen for. If it weren't for that forced politicization, she might be able to measure individual treatments on their scientifically demonstrated merits and drawbacks on a case-by-case basis instead of playing identity politics.
I have a comment in moderation about a couple of systematic reviews of chemotherapy for metastatic lung cancer and colorectal cancer (the subject of the study and article Marg referred to) that show they dowork, in terms of extending life and/or improving quality of life.
I've noted this recently: a typical crank manoeuvre is to deflect attention from themselves and their claims to the 'other side'. Pick an enemy, any enemy and attack them in the hopes we don't notice that they haven't proven themselves right.
Glad to see you are all still paying attention.
Yet another tour of distractions away from the fact that MARG, the contemptible purse-snatcher of science, HAS NO EVIDENCE THAT ENERGY HEALING WORKS
Marg, on 28th August I asked you a question. You didn't answer. I'm very polite, so didn't persist, but it's late at night (where I am) and I have drink taken - so I'll repost:
''Marg: ”Leigh Fortson`s book “Embrace, Release, Heal“, which came out last year, is quite a resource. She has collected the stories of a dozen cancer survivors, including herself, who beat the odds with alternative medicine after conventional treatment failed”
And there we have it, really. ALL those cancer survivors had had conventional cancer treatment. Suzanne Somers-style, they have chosen to credit whatever ‘alternative medicine’ they also took.
I’ve read scores – perhaps hundreds – of ‘I healed my own cancer’ stories. I’ve never seen one that stood up to the mildest scrutiny. Without exception the person has either had conventional treatment too, OR was never actually diagnosed with cancer in the first place (many of the latter had self-diagnosed, some were flat out lying).
And believe me, I wanted to see reliable testimonials. I’ve ‘fessed up on RI before to being a reformed altie. It took my own cancer to shake me out of that. Books, websites, email exchanges… all the ‘healed myself’ testimonials I read led me to one conclusion – no alternative treatment had ever been effective against a single case of cancer. Anywhere. Ever.
The person who argued most persuasively had refused chemo and radiotherapy for her breast cancer, and was adamant that Gerson therapy had saved her life. But… before undertaking that gruelling regime, she had had surgery.
Me? Stage 3 breast cancer; surgery, chemo, radiotherapy. Fit and well almost 9 years after diagnosis.
Oh, that reminds me.
‘Most cancer patients in this country [which country, btw?] die of chemotherapy.’
Evidence, please.''
Marg,
I will never tire of combating lies that are spread about conventional cancer treatments, such as claims that they are "treatments that don't work" (for evidence this is a lie see my comment when it finally emerges from moderation). Regrettably some people believe these lies and make bad decisions that can have devastating effects on them and their families.
Here's another systematic review of chemotherapy for non-small-cell lung cancer, one of the two types of cancer referred to in that article you linked to. Remember that a systematic review is, to quote Ben Goldacre, "an unbiased survey of all the evidence on a given question. It is the best-quality evidence that can be used". It concludes that:
If you had metastatic non-small-cell lung cancer, would you really choose energy healing or any other alternative treatment over chemotherapy? Without conventional treatment, average life expectancy is 8 months. Conventional treatment can add several months to that, in some cases much longer. That's not a cure, and we all wish there were better treatments, but every day of additional time spent with loved ones is precious to these patients and their families.
There isn't a shred of evidence that energy healing or any other alternative treatment can offer even a single extra day of life to a patient with terminal cancer. Not a shred.
By the way, that's life expectancy once the cancer has metastasized. When caught earlier, which is unfortunately rare, treatment is much more effective.
Ah, not just a sad sack, but one with nowhere else to go.
Sister and brother sceptics:
FYI- the new blog platform shuts down threads after 90 days...time minus 17 days and counting.
It's sad that this is all it takes for you to believe that a claim is true. It's even sadder that you don't understand why that's wrong.
Even sadder, Marg's magic powers and associated anecdotes don't even rival those of Veet for Men.
Denice - I was wondering earlier today when this one is shut. Thanks. Is that midnight 18th/19? I had been pondering making the font invisible...
Also I saw reference to a $ 7500 fee but didn't scroll to find exactly where it was declared. What, was that for energy healing??? No way! Anyhow, I have a setup that does the same stuff for free for everybody, all the time.
Marg, I’m curious. A few days ago (October 31, 2012), after quoting from Ben Goldacre’s book, you complained
Now, on November 2, 2012, you state:
Do you not see the irony here?
In any case, Judith’s (lack of ) understanding of control groups is even worse than your own, and we covered all that ground with both of you back in June (http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2012/06/05/reiki-versus-dogs-just-bei… and sorry I have no clue how to link specific comments out of those almost 600; see June 16th about 40% down).
Seriously, Marg: you are in no position to criticize anyone else about bias.
@lo_mcg
Since you are still alive, they must not have given you enough chemotherapy. After all, according to Marg the objective of Oncologists must be to kill their patients.
Bengston goes cloudbusting surely he can do the same to our quarks and effect a cure of anything. It was in The Toronto Star, and, and he did it ten times.
I guess, now that he has a lurnin DVD for $$$$$ale, he's decided you can lurn others the magic. He was unsure in the article but didn't see an issue with charging people to hear him talk.
Yes, it was $7500 or thereaboots and you could put the 2 large down payment via PayPal. It is a ways upstream.
Even further up she mentioned something aboot having little trust in those in her "profession" for reasons almost Protestant like. But this $7500 man, he's good. What?
Sadly, the lawyer I sparred with displays a similar train of thought to Marg and was quite ready to spout abject falsehoods either through ignorance or guile. My drachmas are on the former. He couldn't keep track of what he was saying either as he, the poet and another editor circled the wagons.
The poet used the 'I'm too humble to know anything" gambit and just expected his sciencey things, like his coffee machine, to work.
Marg, you remind of two people I worked with. IT pros all. They are convinced reading Harold Pothead would lurn yur chilluns witchcraft. Seriously, and one believes mental illness is demonic possession. Do you find these ideas ridiculous? Fictional even?
But not a cloudbusting hornswoggler?
Marg,
I couldn't find this claim on Judith's blog. I didn't look for very long as I found myself getting increasingly angry at the ignorant and dangerous misinformation I found there. For example, she claims that:
Following at the link on WebMD, what do I find (my emphasis)?
So Judith's claim about this study is completely wrong. The study found that palliative care in addition to cancer treatment improved outcomes. This kind of ignorant and misleading nonsense really annoys me.
I also noticed that Judith's blog is based in the UK where it is a crime under the Cancer Act for any unqualified person to, "offer to treat any person for cancer, or to prescribe any remedy therefor, or to give any advice in connection with the treatment thereof". She should be careful what she writes.
Anyway, getting back to what Marg wrote, that Judith claims that "people do better with palliative energy treatments than palliative chemo". How could Judith possibly have enough experience with different types of cancer to tell her this? The systematic review of the treatment of metastatic non small cell lung cancer, still the cancer most people die from, I linked to in my comment above (still in moderation) found that survival ranged from 1 week to 2 years. They had to look at 1,315 patients on supportive care alone and 1,399 patients on supportive care and chemo to be able to say with any confidence that chemo doubled life expectancy.
I have to repeat, it is simply not possible for a single person to make any judgment on this from simple clinical observations. If Judith is making this claim she is either deluding herself or deliberately lying to her patients. If her patients reject palliative chemotherapy on the basis of her claims she is robbing them of months or years of life, and causing them unnecessary pain and suffering. I find it hard to express just how despicable I think this is without lapsing into profanity.
Ah, Krebiozen, your conclusion is valid anywhere but in Marg and Judith's PermanentOppositesDayWorld, where clinical trials are hopelessly biased and only anecdotes are reliable.
Then again, Marg doesn't realize that the full-time lurkers (and the odd rare poster such as your humble servant here) are all laughing at her persistance in returning to the debate stage when her podium has been reduced to smoldering ruins by wave after wave of facts and reason.
Scottynuke,
Yet this study is apparently reliable because Judith (mistakenly) thinks it supports her position. She even links to a WebMD article about it that accurately describes what was done.
Did she deliberately lie about what it said, hoping that people wouldn't follow her link and read the article for themselves? Did she read the article but misunderstand it through her perceptual filter of prejudice against conventional cancer treatments? That seems difficult to believe since the study design was described in plain English, as in the quote I gave above. What part of, "along with cancer treatments" did she not understand?
The study itself says, "We randomly assigned patients with newly diagnosed metastatic non–small-cell lung cancer to receive either early palliative care integrated with standard oncologic care or standard oncologic care alone." There isn't any technical jargon there that could confuse a layperson, is there? I'm sure that if and when she understands that it doesn't support her claims it will suddenly become a biased and unreliable study.
If you are going to warn people off conventional cancer treatment, claiming that a scientific study supports this, you had damned well better get your facts right. Grrr.
Narad,
Have hurt myself laughing at the Veet For Men reviews. Thanks, despite the pain, I needed that.
http://www.naturalnews.com/037766_cancer_center_Texas_profiteering.html
More news from the trenches of cancer research:
CPRIT leadership obstructed peer review process to play favorites, claim scientists
The straw that broke the camel's back was an $18 million grant recently awarded to the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, which was to be used for commercializing and rushing to market new cancer drugs. According to now-departed scientists from CPRIT, which include Nobel laureates Alfred G. Gilman, the group's chief scientific officer, and Philip A. Sharp, along with many others, key leadership at CPRIT flagrantly sidestepped the scientific peer review process in awarding the grant, as well as several others, while putting various peer-reviewed grants on the back burner.
CPRIT leadership has also been steering the organization towards a "new, politically driven, commercialization-based mission," according to one now-resigned scientist, which implies that more public money is now being given to drug companies to develop cancer drugs rather than to groups trying to prevent and cure cancer. This same scientist warned in his resignation letter that, if left unchecked, this hijacking of CPRIT by those with ill motives and shady intent has the potential to "subvert the entire scientific enterprise."
@ THS:
I'm not sure if it's inclusive or exclusive.
At any rate, this thread causes my computer to balk and refuse to load and let me type. I wonder why ( rhetorical ?).
The woo I survey similarly speaks of the failings of science without having any successes of its own except in its fevered imaginings.
Marg,
Earlier in the discussion, you mentioned that "There must be frauds in the energy healing business just as there are in other fields of human endeavor. I would say it would be difficult to expose them."
Take this Judith person. I briefly perused her blog, but not in any great detail as others seem to have done so already.
Do you agree misrepresenting a study like Krebiozen pointed out, (either by accident or deliberately) would reduce Judith's standing and the trustworthiness of any information and advice she is giving?
While this is not as such a reflection on any healing abilities she may or may not have, it does seem a major overlapse in research. Mistakes do sometimes happen and we all do them, so giving her the benefit of the doubt now that the mistake is discovered, we should soon expect to see the text changed/withdrawn and possibly a corrigendum stating that the previous information was incorrect. Right?
Unless it wasn't a mistake, in which case, why would the information she provides for her energy healing be any more trustworthy than her information on medical studies (that she presents as validating her views, among other things, on energy healing)?
@Gaist
I don't see Judith misrepresenting the study in her blog.
Obviously, instead of overlapse I meant oversight.
Quoted from Krebiozen, 7 posts up from your last one:
"Also, if you read Judith’s blog, you’ll see she says that in her experience people do better with palliative energy treatments than palliative chemo.
I couldn’t find this claim on Judith’s blog. I didn’t look for very long as I found myself getting increasingly angry at the ignorant and dangerous misinformation I found there. For example, she claims that:
A study published in the New England Journal of Medicine in 2010 showed that advanced lung cancer patients in palliative care lived longer and had better quality of life than patients who continued to receive cancer treatment.
Following at the link on WebMD, what do I find (my emphasis)?
In the new three-year study, people diagnosed with spreading non-small-cell lung cancer who received palliative care early on, along with cancer treatments, showed marked improvement in their overall quality of life and lived more than two months longer than those who received cancer treatment without palliative services.
So Judith’s claim about this study is completely wrong. "
Marg,
The paragraph in question is the 9th one on this page.
I'm getting the same feeling I get when I watch Potholer54's videos about AGW denialist Mockton. Mockton makes an assertion and cites a source. Potholer looks up the source and it says the opposite. Makes me wonder if Marg is going to start showing creatively edited graphs.
Also, I could take similar exception to numerous other bits of misinformation on Judith's blog. It was just the most blatant misrepresentation of the facts I noticed after a brief perusal.
So, Marg, to report on this story, which does absolutely nothing to advance your own moronic desires, you cite Droolin' Mike Adams's sidekick Huff? Couldn't even be troubled to present the WSJ item referred to? Pop over to the months of coverage by Nature?
With the greatest sincerity, Marg, FOADIAF. HTH. HAND.
And.... every fence-sitter and lurker has just been pointed out that Marg has no ethics, sees what she wants to see, lacks reading comprehension, or is just plain lying. Or all of the above.
In the dictionary, where the phrase "be open minded but not so much your brain falls out", Marg is pictured as the person whose brain has fallen out. She would rather believe in people who agree with her than admit they might be wrong in certain instances. Like when they misrepresent a paper.
By the way Marg:
Yet another tour of distractions away from the fact that MARG, the contemptible purse-snatcher of science, HAS NO EVIDENCE THAT ENERGY HEALING WORKS.
Cause if you think the Gish gallop is going to make us forget that, you'd be wrong.
Krebiozen, you don’t have to go to Judith’s blog to find her claim that “in her experience people do better with palliative energy treatments than palliative chemo” – you can find it here on this blog, in her anecdotes on the June Reiki thread I linked earlier.
Thanks to your instructions on the Burzinsky thread, I can now link to Judith’s comment with that claim:
http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2012/06/05/reiki-versus-dogs-just-bei…
I also recall challenging her to do an actual study on her patients, with follow-up conducted by an impartial observer, but I don’t have the time to locate that exchange with her (which was a few days later). Somehow, I doubt she’s followed through any of our suggestions in that regard.
Chemmomo,
I'm glad my comment-linking instructions were useful. I remember that comment - the energy healing worked but the patient died. Incidentally I wonder what the autopsy, if there was one, found. Had the pancreatic tumor shrunk or disappeared? Then there was the other patient whose "naturopath marvelled at his condition".
Really, looking at individual cases or small numbers of cases and trying to determine if they lived longer or had a better quality of life than they would have without treatment, whether conventional or otherwise, by comparing them with median values, or other individual cases is futile. The variance in both these measures is just too great.
As I mentioned above, life expectancy for metastatic non-small-cell lung cancer with conventional treatment may be a median of 5-8 months, but it can vary from 1 week to 2 years. There is no reliable way of knowing in advance where on this curve an individual patient falls. The quality of life of a terminal cancer patients can vary dramatically. The only way of making any sense out of this is looking at large numbers of patients to pull some statistical power out of all the noise. Otherwise it's all about seeing patterns in noise, and confirmation bias, as we see all too often.
Chemmomo, I suggested doing a study of her own as well, further upthread. She apparently doesn't seem to think she needs to do one. And/or doesn't seem to think she needs proper placebo-controlled, double blind, random testing.
Let's not forget that for her anecdotes and 'perception is reality' is enough.
@Krebiozen
What do you say to 20 months for stage-4 pancreatic cancer -- originally diagnosed as stage 4, not as stage 1 -- 12 months with energy healing alone, at the end of which time the patient was able to go salmon fishing and white-water rafting? What do you say to 44 months of survival with stage-4 small-cell lung cancer -- also originally diagnosed as stage 4 -- during most of which time the patient was able to run his business and mount an exhibition which was his life-long dream. Don't tell me these numbers are not way out of the ordinary. I would like to see ordinary patients with stage-4 pancreatic cancer who are receiving palliative chemo go white water rafting. Do you know any who do?
You're a scam artist, Marg. Deal with it.
As far as I can figure it out her latest argument reduces to "Because scientists quit the Texas Cancer institute over the proper funding balance for commercialization vs. pure research projects, magical handwaving cures cancer."
As ever, @JGC, the message is "science has big clay feet, don't trust it".
@Narad
You are severely blinkered by what you consider reality. Deal with that.
We know science is imperfectly practiced, Marg. We've been over this. How do you intend to provide us with something better?
@al kimeea
Are you suggesting that Bengston is charging $7500 to treat people? That's news to me.
RE: white water rafting cancer survivors, I'd say "If true that's a really unexpected outcome: what makes you think energy healing contributed to it in any way?"
As I sorely doubt you've even managed to assess this in the first place, please do explain it to me, you rotting pumpkin.
Marg, is your issue, whatever it is, with scientific methodology itself?
@Narad
Believing me to be a rotting pumpkin just goes to show your skewed view of reality, oh wise one.
Yeah, it's looking like Marg's upped the trolling to the point where she doesn't even pretend to have anything meaningful or constructive to say, just expressing her contempt for everything.
But, for the sake of any lurkers who skip ahead this far, I'd like to show Marg's continued unreasonableness:
1. What's your problem with science, Marg? Be specific.
2. What superior replacement do you propose, Marg?
Orac should seriously just close this thread. Too bad he can't do so retroactively, but I don't think even tarial cells allow that.
Still waiting for you to comment on Judith's obvious lie, Marg.
So you can't tell me what that is, even though I've already told you right here, but nonetheless you're willing to posture about it? Like I said, you're a fraud to your core.
How does a dispute regarding funding priority--whether resources should be directed to purely academic projects or to projects which have the potential to be commercialized and provide a return on investment which could support additional projects--translate to 'science having big clay feet'? Explain your reasoning.
My suspicion: Marg can't think about science in terms of philosophy and epistemology, only as a political and cultural weapon. It's not about whether or not a scientific result is true, it's about whose tribe the results favor.
So, if science discovers something a greedy corporation can use, it's because science has been sleeping with the corporation and is evil for doing so. How dare science do favors for anyone but me and my tribe!
Marg,
Have you no shame? Don't you have anything to say about Judith's claims that patients on palliative treatment alone did better than patients on chemotherapy when the evidence says nothing of the sort?
Which case is this? On Judith's blog she mentions one patient:
This would appear to be the same patient, but which did he have, pancreatic cancer or bile duct cancer? You would expect 2% of stage 4 bile duct cancer patients to survive 5 years, so I don't see 20 months as particularly remarkable, certainly not remarkable enough for us to throw up our hands and conclude that magic is real after all.
Although the median survival for extensive stage small cell lung carcinoma is only 8–13 months, 1–5% of patients treated with chemotherapy live 5 years or longer.
But they are not that unusual! Go and have a look through the SEER cancer database, using Fast Stats, and see for yourself. These patients may be unusual, but not they are not that unusual. They certainly fall well within the expected survival stats.
No, but since you seem to be unsure what type of cancer this patient had, I'm not at all convinced you do either. This doesn't not fill me with confidence in the accuracy of these anecdotes.
Some terminal cancer patients live much longer than the average. Stephen Jay Gould, for example, was diagnosed with malignant peritoneal mesothelioma in 1982. Like metastatic non-small-cell lung cancer, this type of cancer is (or was back then) considered incurable with an average survival of around 8 months.
Despite this he was looking extremely healthy when I saw him lecture in London some 8 years later. He had made a full recovery and died in 2002, 20 years after his mesothelioma diagnosis, of an unrelated cancer of the brain.
@Krebiozen
Nah, marg has no shame. Heck, she can say all that crap while cheating sick and ill people out of their hard earned money by her version of woo, I doubt she feels any component of shame.
Which makes her a complete monster.
1600 posts and still nothing to prove anything except Marg is an idiot.
Yawn..... And the Gish gallop continues....
Hmmm, also, it looks like you know the thread will be closed soon and are trying to get in as much rubbish as possible before then.
no not Bengston, some other hornswoggler you're marketing as offering reality based therapy
he or you could charge $5, still a $CAM
I was just looking at this, from Marg, more closely:
And comparing it to this from Judith's blog, again:
There are a lot of unknowns in this case, for instance we don't know if the patients had surgery, but it is possible to make some informed guesses from the information we have been given.
Bile duct cancer that has spread to the liver is not stage 4, it's stage 2A, which is regional (stages 2 and 3), not distant as I had assumed from Marg telling us it was stage 4 pancreatic cancer. Intrahepatic bile duct cancer would not be described as having metastases to the liver since it is inside the liver, so it was presumably extrahepatic bile duct cancer. Five year survival for stage 2A extrahepatic bile duct cancer is 24%, so it seems this man was in no way even unusual, much less exceptional, having survived less than 2 years. It seems very likely he would have done much better had he been "persuaded to try chemo and radiation" much earlier. With treatment, 10% of patients are still alive 10 years later.
Remember, this case has been presented to us as presumably one of the best available examples of the miracles that energy healing is capable of performing. When we look more closely it looks very much like a sad example of a patient who was persuaded against his better judgement to reject conventional treatment in favor of energy healing. It doesn't seem at all surprising to me that a person given a terminal cancer diagnosis would "travel to a national park to go salmon fishing and white water rafting", especially if was aware that his condition was worsening and this might be his last chance - ever heard of a bucket list? It was also just after this, 12 months after diagnosis that it seems he realized that he was getting worse, not better, and decided belatedly to get radiotherapy and chemotherapy.
In my opinion this is not a case of miraculous energy healing, but a case of a man with cancer delaying conventional treatment for a year while he tried a useless alternative therapy, and paying for his foolishness with months or even years of his life.
- Marg yet again diarrhetically displaying zero evidence that her craft is anything other than fiction
tried to find it, but further up she mentions some other snake-oil salesman she does trust who charges over 7 large and uses PayPal for the $2G down payment
but $60 for a lurnin DVD, that is supicious
Gentlemen:
this thread shall be mercifully put to rest in about 2 weeks, perhaps we should start thinking about our summation. My own will probably appear elsewhere because my computer is not happy at this locus and if the computer ain't happy, ain't nobody happy.
I believe Bengston on the subject of mice also, marg, and that as he reported the mice which received energy healing treatments fared exactly the same as mice who received no treatment whatsoever.
What I still fail to understand is how you can possibly interpret this to be evidence energy healing works, especially when you've made it clear you wouldn't consider similar studies finding patients receiving chemotherapy do just as well as patients receiving no treatment at all to represent evidence chemotherapy works.
@Krebiozen
I imagine his doctors who told him he had 7 months to live and that all they could offer him was palliative chemotherapy did not know what they were talking about. You are of course in a much better position to know about his condition than the oncologists who were treating him..
I'm afraid that Judith's reliance on her mystery stash of documents in the pancreatic tale renders her reportage prima facie suspect. That fact that her story in this one doesn't quite add up helps matters not a whit.
The median isn't the message.
Not that I expect you to understand the concept of a non-absolutist perspective, probability, or population thinking.
^ "the original pancreatic tale"
I've noticed that alt-med defenders often resort to sarcasm when the alternative would be to state their claims directly and make their flaws visible.
In this case, Marg, the contemptible purse-snatcher of science, sneers "Oh, of course you mainstream science defenders know more than the oncologists who actually examined the patient," because what she actually believes is "we advocates of energy healing know better than the oncologists who actually examined the patient." But she knows that if she says that straight out, it's going to sound as arrogant and foolish as ... well, as it very much is. So she resorts to sarcasm.
I think it's time to put another ultimatum question to Marg. Standard rules: if she does not answer the question within her next three comments, on this or any other thread, the answer will be assumed for her. Marg, the question is: why do you accept the Bengston experiments as supportive of "energy healing" when you would never view experiments where a chemotherapy agent failed to outperform placebo as supportive of chemotherapy? If you do your standard routine of trying to change the subject, we'll have to conclude that your answer is "because I want energy healing to be popular even if there's no reality to it."
Marg,
Have you read and actually understood anything I have written recently?
You still don't seem to understand that when an oncologist tells a patient that they can expect to live for, on average, seven months, that doesn't mean that every single patient will die on schedule. Half of all patients will survive for less than that time, and half will live for longer by definition. Some will live much longer; no magic, no miracles, just natural variation in the course of the disease. As I wrote above, a quarter of stage 2A extrahepatic bile duct cancer patients will still be alive five years after diagnosis. Would a graph help? Incidentally, as an example of how conventional treatment has improved, in 1975 five year survival was around 5%.
You also still don't seem to understand that palliative chemotherapy will often extend patients' lives, as well as improving their quality of life.
Neither do you appear to understand that those oncologists would have used the same sources of information I have used to estimate their patient's life expectancy.
You have misrepresented this patient's condition and the likelihood of him surviving as long as he did. I still think the most likely scenario is that this man lost months or years of his life because he believed the same sort of misinformation you and Judith have been spreading, such as, "people do better with palliative energy treatments than palliative chemo".
@Krebiozen
I repeat, the patient's doctors told him 7 months. They did not say that he could with live longer with chemotherapy. Strangely enough, after he stopped the energy treatments, he lived exactly as long as his doctors said he would.
@Krebiozen
Unresectable distal bile duct cancer
In patients with advanced distal bile duct cancer that is not surgically removable the goal of treatment is palliation. The most important palliative measure is the relief of jaundice. We do not recommend surgical treatment to relieve the jaundice. A wall stent placed by a gastroenterologist provides adequate biliary drainage to relieve the obstruction and relieve jaundice. Surgically unresectable distal bile duct cancers do not usually respond very well to chemotherapy and radiation therapy therefore treatment options are limited.
(http://www.surgery.usc.edu/divisions/tumor/pancreasdiseases/web%20pages…)
http://www.cancer.org/cancer/bileductcancer/detailedguide/bile-duct-can…
Resectable versus unresectable bile duct cancers
The TNM system divides bile duct cancers into several groups that help give doctors an idea about a person's prognosis (outlook). But for treatment purposes, doctors often use a simpler system based on whether these cancers are likely to be resectable (able to be completely removed by surgery) or unresectable. In general terms, most stage III and IV tumors are unresectable, but there may be exceptions. Resectability is based on the size and location of the tumor, how far it has spread, and whether or not a person is healthy enough to have surgery.
Well, that's the three. Shall we give her one more chance, just to show that we're bending over backwards and she still can't face up to simple questions?
You have zero documentation for this claim, so saying "I repeat" as some sort of intensifier is aimless. I note again that Judith's failure to submit a case report on the case for which she claims to have medical documentation renders everything that she emits suspect. The fact that you happen to be as dumb as a sack of hammers does not alter this.
And you have conceded Antaeus's question.
Marg,
You claim to know this but earlier you claimed he had stage 4 pancreatic cancer. This makes a big difference to expected survival. If you can''t get the type or stage of cancer right why should we believe you about precisely what his doctors told him? Were you there?
Every oncologist knows that estimating how long a patient will live is by no means an exact science. I have never heard of an oncologist telling a patient they will live for a precise length of time as you claim in this case. They explain the average survival, that they might live for a longer or shorter time and discuss treatment options.
How do you know this? If this is true why did Judith write:
This strongly implies that his doctors has wanted him to have chemotherapy and radiotherapy earlier, which makes some sense as they may improve life expectancy in bile duct cancer, if only by a few (precious) months. Why would they suddenly become appropriate if they weren't when he was diagnosed? That makes no sense at all.
If the energy treatments were working, why did he stop them? Are you seriously suggesting that the energy treatments somehow suspended the progression of his cancer, but he decided to stop them and have conventional treatment instead? And then the cancer progressed as originally expected and he died right on time? That's ridiculous. He lived well within the expected range for this type of cancer. There was no energy healing miracle.
I take it you are suggesting this was a case of unresectable distal bile duct cancer for which chemotherapy and radiotherapy were not suitable. So why would his oncologists persuade him to undergo these?
I'm not sure why you posted this. Did the patient have surgery? If so the chemotherapy and radiotherapy would make more sense. I was assuming he didn't have surgery and that his cancer was unresectable, otherwise there would be nothing remotely unusual about how long he survived. Judith only mentioned liver metastases and I'm sure she would have mentioned distant metastases if they were present. This makes this stage 2A with, as I wrote above, a 5 year survival rate of 24%, so surviving for less than 2 years is not miraculous. Did you notice what it says on the page you linked to?
What you write simply does not ring true and even if everything you have claimed is true, which I doubt, there is nothing remarkable about any of these cases. Their survival fell well within the expected range for the stage of the cancers they had. Why can't you see that?
Yet another tour of distractions away from the fact that MARG, the contemptible purse-snatcher of science, HAS NO EVIDENCE THAT ENERGY HEALING WORKS.
And resorts to creationism tactics of attacking X in the hope that it proves Y. And is a classic crank.
That is my summation.
A summation? When you explain to someone how they have fooled themselves into believing something that is not true through a combination of suggestion, expectation, confirmation bias, seeing patterns in noise, misunderstanding survival estimates in cancer, misinterpreting the variable course of illnesses, misreading scientific literature and accepting other people's claims uncritically, they often still won't believe you.
People have been deluding themselves in this way for millennia, and even though we now have reliable tools to elucidate the truth, there are still some who stubbornly refuse to use them, and insist their personal perceptions are more reliable.
When the alternative is having to give up perhaps their only source of income, and having to accept that they have given seriously ill people false information that may have led to serious injury and even shortened their lives, I suppose going into denial is understandable but not, by any means, forgivable.
" just to show that we’re bending over backwards and she still can’t face up to simple questions?"
questions? u want to ask questions, how wude.
If The Rosa Protocol had definitively shown going all wavy gravy on your patients marks to be a real thing, JAMA would have been quite happy to publish it and as Marg said the medical establishment would take over.
Because it is then medicine and not the quackery shystery thing it is now known to be.
Yes, classic crankery in most every sense and very much like religion where if all the people only believed like this, doG would be pleased and the world would be a better place. Sub 'cancer eliminated' for a pleased deity. Like religion, cherry picking and distraction is the order of the day - Evolution? Hilter!! Energy healing? Thalidomide!!
Which should I consider more likely, Marg?
A) A science-based doctor says something utterly counter to an underlying rationale of science-based medicine by stating a patient's remaining time in an absolute number instead of a probabilistic estimate.
Humans are complex entities and as such, variation is the default expectation in science. That's why we do clinical trials with large numbers of people and controls to sort out real patterns from the noise of complexity. We don't want to be mislead by other factors or dumb luck. We also know that human perception is subjective and can be easily biased by various subconscious cognitive failings, which is the other reason we invented scientific methodology: To eliminate or at least reduce those sources of bias. Blinding the experimenter to treatment and control groups, for example, doesn't let the experimenter's subconscious know which measurements to fudge to affirm his bias. He only finds out afterward.
OR
B) The message was misunderstood and the misunderstanding was relayed to you.
Altie culture, in my experience, treats humans as simple entities, so they speak and think in absolutes by default. That's why they're uncritical of anecdotes and loudly complain when we point out the mere possibility of confounding factors (including human cognitive biases) involved in learning about an uncertain world. They deny the complexity of humanity and assume their perception is objective and unbiased.
@Krebiozen
In the staging of unresectable bile duct cancer the TMN classicification seems to be used. I don't know where you get "IIA".
Marg,
Did you locate the (I'm still willing to give her the benefit of the doubt) mistake in Judith's blog yet? The one Krebiozen pointed out ("The paragraph in question is the 9th one on this page"*)
Do you think it's an honest mistake, or do you have another explanation for the discrepancy?
Does the presence of such seemingly obvious fumble in research make her other claims about energy healing less trustworthy? Given that she is earning income from energy healing, and seems to use the error as supportive of her views on energy healing.
Also, as our chances for discussion on this thread seem to be nearing it's end, I'd like to make sure you have no more questions concerning the Dr. Roses quote about drug efficacy (earlier), or the fact that Burzynski is still operating his clinic (way earlier) that I (amongst others much more knowledgeable than me) tried to help you with.
You never referred to the issues again so I'm inclined to assume they were explained satisfactorily, but it's always good to make sure.
---------
* = quoted from Krebiozen
Marg,
Your strategy of focusing on an insignificant detail in the hope this will distract us from the massive fail that has been pointed out is getting a little tiring.
I gave a link to the page with information about staging above and explained my reasoning. In any case it isn't really important. What is important is that survival for 20 months is not as remarkable as you and Judith are claiming. Even if this man's cancer was at stage 4 when he was diagnosedfive year survival is still 2%, but he lived for less than 2 years.
You are asking us to believe that the occurrence of something with a probability of greater than 1 in 50 is a miracle. It isn't.
@Krebiozen
That is not an insignificant detail. Nor is his doctors' prognosis.
@Gaist
I have written Judith and she has responded. You can read the comments.
@Krebiozen
How odd that the Brits stage bile-duct cancer differently from the Americans and give different rates of survival. Maybe patients with bile duct cancer should move to Britain.
Marg, you are a pouty, whining, irritatingly evasive, and thieving blight on the very fabric of mankind.
@Narad
And that adds to the discussion how?
Mirrors, O Pouty One. Give them a try.
Ultimatum question, Marg: Why won't you respond to the point that has been made several times now, that doctors' prognoses are not given in the form of upper limits?
If I go into a casino and play a particular slot machine with $100 in quarters, playing only the coins I brought with me, someone who knows the odds on that machine may predict that the most likely result is that I'll wind up with around $80 in winnings. But if I exceed that, if I come out with $200 instead, have I proven myself right and that person who predicted $80 wrong? Have I proven that my strategy of using "energy winning," sending invisible energy into the machine to affect its willingness to pay off for me, is so successful that probabilty theory must be discarded as useless or at least rewritten to accomodate my incredible success? No.
The idea that the doctors who saw this patient said "You have at least seven months to live and certainly no more than eight and 20 is just utterly outlandish" does not match how actual medical practitioners give their prognoses. Why do you refuse to address this point, Marg? If you don't answer in your next three comments, the answer will be taken as "because I prefer an impressive-sounding interpretation of the anecdote to a realistic interpretation."
Marg,
They don't. You appear to have a comprehension problem. Take a look at what SEER at the US National Cancer Institute has to say about bile duct cancer survival (PDF)(. Which diagnosis best fits this case you claim is evidence of a miracle? What is the median survival, and what percentage of patients survive 2 years?
Just to add to my previous comment, let's work backwards and look for a scenario in the SEER PDF in which median survival is 7 months as this man's reportedly was. This should give us an idea of what range of survival patients who are expected to survive 7 months actually have.
The closest I can find that fits with the information given about this patient is in Table 6.6, 'Other Biliary Cancer (excluding ampulla & carcinoids)' for patients graded as 'Poor' with median survival of 7.8 months. But 20.8% of these patients survive 2 years, 8.7% survive 5 years and 4.3% are still alive ten years after diagnosis.
Yet surviving less than 2 years is evidence of something so unusual it can only be explained by a mysterious energy unknown to science? I don't think so.
@Gaist
You're wasting your time. Marg doesn't accept things, she merely moves on from them. I doubt she's understood anything at all that's been said to her. It's best to give up on her - that goes for everyone.
Nothing would give me greater pleasure, @Flip, than for all of you to give up on me.
A sad self-commentary, but at least a bit of honest insight.
Sad indeed. She's not interested in finding the truth through open, honest discussion, only causing frustration for gits and shiggles.
@flip
Well, remember, marg is a confessed swindler, quack, and monster, preying on the innocent, sick, and, all just for their hard earned money, without giving a single damn about treating them effectively.
The more she posts here, proving it to the entire world, and the less she posts someplace else, where she can find more vulnerable marks, the better I say. Just to prove to the world how much of a monster she really is.
Marg, another thing:
I read the comments, in which Judith says:
Perhaps being an energy healer has a detrimental effect on English comprehension, since Judith appears to have completely missed the point, or perhaps she hasn't bothered to read the study itself.
Judith quite clearly stated that patients having palliative care alone survived longer than those than those "who continued to receive cancer treatment", yet the study itself states:
So Judith's statement is simply wrong. What is there to consider? It's wrong, and misleading, and could potentially give patients with metastatic non–small-cell lung cancer (and other cancer patients), the impression that chemotherapy will shorten their lives, instead of the truth which is that chemotherapy can significantly lengthen their lives.
It is true that the study found that, "Early introduction of palliative care also led to less aggressive end-of-life care, including reduced chemotherapy and longer hospice care". Judith, seeing this through her anti-chemo lens, takes this to mean that it is the reduced chemotherapy associated with less aggressive end-of-life care that leads to the increase in life expectancy, of course, because she believes that chemotherapy is evil and dangerous . However, the study itself states that:
How could chemotherapy during the last 14 days of a person's life possibly have shortened their lives by 2.7 months? This was a prospective, randomized 12 week study so the only difference between the groups was the early palliative care.
Judith's assumption that less chemotherapy at end-of-life was responsible for a two month increase in survival is clearly nonsense.
@Marg honey
You're the one who keeps posting. You don't want us to reply, shut the f up and finally stick the flounce. Or you know, come up with something better than logical fallacies, creationist tactics and lack of evidence.
@Novalox
True, I hadn't thought of it that way.
@Krebiozen
How could chemotherapy during the last 14 days of a person’s life possibly have shortened their lives by 2.7 months?
Are you seriously asking this? If the person died from the chemo, as PEOPLE DO, it would definitely shorten their lives.
Yet another tour of distractions away from the fact that MARG, the contemptible purse-snatcher of science, HAS NO EVIDENCE THAT ENERGY HEALING WORKS.
Are we done yet?
@Marg: What evidence do you have that the person died from chemo? Did you even consider the possibility that the death was due to, you know, cancer?
flip,
Not quite.
I asked:
Marg replied:
Yes I'm seriously asking how chemotherapy during the last 14 days of a persons life can shorten it by 2.7 months, because that is impossible!
The only difference between the two groups in terms of chemotherapy was that the group that got early palliative care had more aggressive treatment including chemotherapy during the last 14 days of their lives. Of the 105 patients that died during the study, 54% (30 of 56 patients) of the standard care group had aggressive end-of-life care vs. 33% (16 of 49 patients) of the early palliative care group. The only way this could have affected their survival by 2.7 months is for the chemotherapy to have had an effect backwards in time, which even you must surely accept is not possible.
By far the most likely explanation for the longer survival seen in patients who got earlier palliative care is that they were in less pain, and suffered less stress and depression, all of which are associated with poorer outcomes. The message from this study is that earlier palliative care enable a patient to die more comfortably, which I think is very important. Trying to twist it into evidence that chemotherapy causes more harm than good is just sick.
Sigh. I only intended to make "during the last 14 days of their lives" bold.
You'll notice that Marg relies upon emotion laden fear mongering that plays on horror stories about chemotherapy that have circulated around alt media and are based on mis-information or tales about the earlier forms of this therapy.
Perhaps you've forgotten that you're dealing with an adherent of an occult system that happily accepts sending "healing energy" back through time.
You know, I think Marg's accusation ties into another enthymeme in altie culture. They assume health is a default, natural state that will persist until something artificial interferes, hence if someone has a natural, terminal disease, it's going to be the artificial medical intervention that outright kills the perfectly healthy patient, never the natural progression of the disease or a tiny slip in the grip doctors have on a patient who's just barely clinging to life.
It's like alties think in terms of videogames. Videogame characters can often perform at full capacity so long as they have at least one hit point. The game thinks in black-and-white binary, so it only recognizes "alive" and "dead" states with a boolean flag. If the patient is at 1 HP and the healer accidentally fumbles and causes a point of damage in a desperate attempt to cast a healing spell, they log that the healer murdered the patient because that one point of damage from the healer triggered the change in the alive/dead flag. It doesn't matter to them if the action was likely to produce a net gain of HP under better circumstances. It doesn't matter that it was the cancer that put the patient in critical condition or that it would have continued dealing damage if the healer did nothing. Practicing medicine means taking calculated risks and accepting that there is no perfect intervention.
I suspect that's one way energy healers and other "harmless" quacks can rationalize their inaction. Their "healing" never does any HP damage (but it does cause GP damage), so they're never at risk of being logged into the system as the killer, and in the cases where patients do recover through other known means, including natural healing and spontaneous remission, they can take the credit despite essentially doing nothing. If the patient dies as a result of inaction, no foul on their part because they didn't do a single point of damage themselves.
Narad,
You're right, I had. Maybe chemotherapy sent back in time has a negative effect on cancer, unlike the normal kind that improves survival. I wonder how Marg explains that systematic review and meta-analysis of chemotherapy in non-small-cell lung cancer, the type of study that Ben Goldacre says "is the best-quality evidence that can be used", which compared 1,399 patients assigned supportive care and chemotherapy and 1,315 patients assigned supportive care alone, that concluded:
Marg, why do you persist in claiming that chemotherapy kills when the evidence clearly demonstrates that it prolongs life? Don't you care that you are spreading lies?
Marg, and any other readers who doubt that chemotherapy is effective, please educate yourself by reading this article.
So you're arguing that instead of living less than 14 days, the patients would have lived for approximately 81 days longer without chemo? Even assuming that with chemo, they survived the 14 days, are you really arguing chemotherapy shortened their survival by over 85%?
If the patient survived for less than the full 14 days with chemotherapy, the 2,7 month reduction would become even more drastic?
Surely such drastic effect would be have been noticed in great number of studies.
chemo is effective and it isn't anything like it used to be, alties appear to cling to the past not only for their ideas but also for those of medicine/science.
As mentioned, a niece is extant a decade after being diagnosed with the same cancer Mario Lemieux had and he went back to playing hockey as well as also breathing still.
I too have fully recovered from my malady after suffering something akin to chemo. I was warned it might kill me too. A very small chance, but I could say no if I felt that was too great a risk. The obverse was a certain slow death that was already evident physiologically.
No more, thanks to the knowledge gained by the holistic application of science.
Tell me Marg, is homeopathy a real thing and what is your fave potent potable?
Oh I forgot to add, if I was one of the lucky ones and the regimen I was on proves to be equally or less effective than the current version. I would hope it doesn't make it to market as it would introduce needless suffering.
Like energy healing, rimshot.
@Krebiozen
Sorry, that "are we done yet?" was directed at Marg.
Marg's scammy rambling sounds very much like some frequent posters on the breast cancer support forum I go to, and it really hits a nerve with me there and here. I *so* appreciate all of you here with the expertise and skills to combat the bull$hittery with facts, evidence, and citations.
I'm convinced that many of the alties at the breast cancer forum (pretending to be patients) are actually scammers who are financially vested in promoting quackery. It's truly despicable that they pretend to be "just one of us" cancer patients in order to sneakily promote their scams and trawl for easy marks.
As infuriating and maddening as this thread has been to read through, I want to thank all of you who have been so articulate and informative in your responses! The discussions Marg has provoked here are more valuable than you know, to real cancer patients like me. Thanks again!
flip.
No need to apologize, deciding when to disengage with cranks is a common problem here, and we all have different opinions. It does work both ways; I wonder what makes them keep coming back and continuing to make comments here, when they are shot down in flames every time. I suspect it's either the hope that they may convert a few lurkers, the chance to point out to their supporters how they are bravely doing battle with the evil allopaths or, perhaps, they have a nagging feeling that they may be wrong.
In this case I suspect someone is JAQing off to the repeated flurry of replies whenever she posts. I don't think she cares about converting lurkers at all; maybe she might take this back to her followers and point out how marvelous she is, but personally I think at this point she's just trolling for giggles.
Hence my tendency to repeat the same phrase over and over again and remark on how this thread needs to die.
For me, I'm happy to keep responding no matter how long a thread gets IF the person on the other end is willing to participate in a discussion. But there's very little you can do if the person only wants to canter in circles.
All of you who have benefited from chemotherapy, God bless, and may you have many more years of health.
Those who have not benefited are clearly not going to be able to post on this forum.
but if they had let you wave your hands around them they would be able to post?!
you are vile
Ooh. Marg just admitted that people benefit from chemotherapy.
Marg, they won't be censored, if that's an alternative interpretation that you're implying. They might face criticism of the logic and evidence behind their arguments, but our ability to criticize using our freedom of speech does not constitute censorship.
Of course, in real medicine, dead patients do tell tales. Doctors have to record their patients' medical histories, including the bad outcomes. Both failures and successes are used in studies to look for problems in treatments after they find widespread use because you can't always catch everything in the clinical trials. Real doctors don't get to forget about their patients once they walk out the door like you probably do. Real doctors don't get to cherry pick testimonials because of this.
What your accusation amounts to is the assertion that science-based medicine does things the way you do because you can't imagine any other way of doing it. You're falsely projecting your own untrustworthy and deceitful methods onto science based medicine to try to distract us from criticizing your methods.
You know, it's now getting worse. You've moved from black-and-white thinking into black-and-black thinking.
@Bronze Dog
I am not implying that they will be censored. I am saying that they are physically unable to comment, being either too debilitated to comment or no longer with us.
I sincerely doubt that "real doctors", or in this case oncologists, remember every failure they had. They see hundreds of deaths in their career -- or rather, they don't see, because they are usually not present when a patient dies. If they remembered every oncology patient who died, and took personal responsibility, they'd likely go insane. In order to be able to continue practicing they are trained to step back from failure. You can see them as heroes or as victims of the system. I prefer to see them as the latter.
A lot of people who've embraced energy healing or other forms of woo (Antineoplastions anyone? Coffee enemas, maybe?) are just as unavailable for comment, The sad truth is that none of us are getting out of here alive.
But it's a fact that chemo is efficacious: evidence shows it can cure some cancers and as an adjuvant therapy following surgery for other cancers can often reduce the likelihood of recurrence and extend survival time post-diagnosis while maintaining or improving quality of life.
Magical handwaving, on the other hand, has never been shown to buy anyone any additional survival time, or to improve their quality of life to a greater extent than do placebo treatments.
Bottom line after 1600 plus comments? We can point to actual evidence demonstrating SBM treatments currently standard of care for illnesses actually work, while you've been completely unable to identify similar evidence demonstrating energy healing works any better than no treatment at all.
Assuming your black-and-white fatalism for the sake of argument, your statement would be true for any form of treatment, energy healing included. If it helps with a fatal disease, the patients are free to post here. If the treatment doesn't work for the fatal disease, however...
Assumptions for the sake of argument abandoned, things aren't that black-and-white. There are fatal cancers that don't reduce you too incapacitated or deceased to type on a keyboard. I know because I've seen two relatives succumb to such - no treatment stopped the progression of the cancer, but modern drugs (and in the case of an aunt, pot) helped them be mobile and active until the very last days of their lives. Anecdotal evidence but that seems acceptable to you.
Coming late to the discussion, noticing a number of links to my blog from this site, I would like to comment @Krebiozen that the patient Marg refers to came to us with a stated diagnosis of pancreatic cancer. Both he and his family told us that's what it was. The cancer was discovered when it affected his bile duct and he developed jaundice. He went under the knife for a Whipple procedure, which was aborted when lesions were found on his liver. He also had two cancerous lymph nodes in his lower abdomen.
@ Marg: I think that's the first time you've acknowledged anything I've said, even if you completely missed the point. Yes, doctors usually have to maintain some psychological distance because they're human beings who regularly deal with human mortality and the feeling of loss it causes in others.
I'm reminded of an episode of Scrubs where JD is caught off guard by one of his elderly patients deciding that she's ready to die, and he has trouble being that aware of human mortality. Dr. Cox points out the obvious: Everything they do is a delay. Life has a 100% mortality rate. Even if doctors successfully prevent a person from dying of one thing, something else will get them, and there's a pretty good chance they'll be in their care when it does. Not because they made it happen, but because it's pretty much their job to delay death to the best of their limited human abilities.
Death is the fire and they're the fire department, so of course they're likely going to be involved in some way when a place burns down. I'm not sure you really understand that.
That's the world we live in, but that's not what I was talking about in my previous comment.
I'm talking about accountability and record keeping. The deaths are acknowledged in the system. Medical records survive, so if someone dies while on drug X, that death gets recorded so we can see where that failure fits in the big picture. There are successes and there are failures, and statistics is how we make sense in an uncertain world. The reason we trust science-based doctors is because they're willing to do the record keeping and do the statistical analyses to make sense of them. Scientifically minded people want to know about failures because they want to improve on flaws. Acknowledging imperfections, failures, and mistakes is not a sign of weakness. To us, that is a strength because it means they likely won't ignore problems.
In my experience, people like you seem to favor the politician's Etch-a-Sketch approach to medicine. Politicians want to look like spotless, infallible paragons, so they either whitewash failures or they make sure no one records them. If you don't look for problems, you won't find any, therefore your record is clean.
It's a rhetorically convenient double-standard between quackery and science-based medicine. Science-based medicine plays with its cards face up and is limited by the hand reality dealt us. Quackery wants to play its cards under the table and protests when we ask to see its whole hand. Your argument that we have a bad hand is meaningless until we get to see yours and compare the two. We think you've got nothing, so we're calling energy medicine's bluff. Put energy medicine's cards on the table.
@Bronze Dog
The point I have been making is that SBM does NOT play with its cards face up, as the recent indictments of the pharmaceutical companies show.
I'd be quite surprised if Marg actually accepted this. She plainly considers herself to have advanced "powers" and to be able to perceive "unblinkered" "reality." She is a Transcendent Being who can Channel the Healing Energy of the Multiverse. Reiki penetrates the Illusion of Time.
"Speaking on Esoteric lines, every irrevocable materialistic person is a dead Man, a living automaton, in spite of his being endowed with great brain power. Listen to what Aryasangha says, stating the same fact: 'That which is neither Spirit nor Matter, neither Light nor Darkness, but is verily the container and root of these, that thou art. The Root projects at every Dawn its shadow on ITSELF, and that shadow thou callest Light and Life, O poor dead Form. (This) Life-Light streameth downward through the stair of the seven worlds, the stair, of which each step becomes denser and darker. It is of this seven-times-seven scale that thou art the faithful climber and mirror, O Little Man! Thou art this, but thou knowest it not. This is the first lesson to learn. The second is to study well and know the Principles of both Kosmos and ourselves, dividing the group into the permanent and impermanent, the higher and immortal and the lower and mortal, for thus only can we master and guide first the lower cosmic and personal, then the higher cosmic and impersonal.
"Once we can do that we have secured our immortality."
How was it preoperatively imaged, Judith?
1. SBM, doctors, regulatory agencies, insurance companies, governments, and pharmaceutical companies are all different entities. SBM is a practice, not an entity, for one thing. In this metaphor, SBM is essentially defined as the practice playing face up, hence part of being an SBM doctor means reporting all results, good and bad.
2. The pharmaceutical companies play face up far more often than alties do, hence their claims are, on average, are more science-based than those of alties. I know they're not perfect angels, but I see no better alternative at this time, and I my trust is proportional to their good behavior and the power of regulatory agencies to keep an eye on them. I want to keep my friends close but my enemies closer.
3. How does this help your case? I haven't seen your energy medicine cards, and your reluctance to show them keeps suggesting to me that you don't have anything. Whining vaguely about pharmaceutical corruption doesn't change the cards in your hand. Even if you provided reliable information that turned me against pharmaceutical companies, what motivation do I have to side with you and energy healing?
Which indictments? Be specific, and explain how those indictments argue that science based medicine is neither safe nor effictive but energy healing is.
I think the fact that she jumped from me talking about SBM doctors to knee-jerk accusations towards pharmaceutical companies once again demonstrates that Marg doesn't know who's playing the game or where I stand on the field. She's been indoctrinated into the childishly naive notion of a two-sided battle between the kingdoms of light and dark. I oppose her, therefore I must be in cahoots with the forces of Derse.
Judith,
I assume this is the same patient you described on your blog like this:
You do know that pancreatic cancer and bile duct cancer are not the same thing, don't you?
That's very often the case, as the pancreas presses on the bile duct obstructing it, it doesn't mean the cancer has spread to the bile duct. Even if it had it would still be pancreatic cancer as it is the primary site that determines the cancer type.
Even if this was stage 4 unresectable pancreatic cancer you would expect about 2% of these patients to be alive 5 years after diagnosis and, extrapolating from SEER survival graphs, about 5% (about 1 in 20 patients) after 2 years so why do you think this patient's 20 month survival is so unlikely?
Throwing two dice and getting two sixes is less likely (1 in 36) or being dealt three of a kind in 5 cards (1 in 46), to give some more mundane examples of similar odds.
By the way, I see you have amended the discussion of that paper about palliative care on your blog. I don't really see why it is included in a blog post titled '"Iatrogenic disease": the view from up close', as it just shows that early palliative care is beneficial, and has nothing whatsoever to do with iatrogenic disease.
@Krebiozen
What passes for cancer treatment today in many cases definitely qualifies under "iatrogenic disease" in my books. People throwing up the lining of their intestines; sustaining burns that will not heal through radiation, kidney failure through chemo; dying of massive infections or internal bleeding because they have white blood cells or platelets left. What, pray tell, is your definition of "iatrogenic disease" but harm sustained through treatment? And it seems that a 6 per cent chance of someone living 3 or 4 months longer is sufficient for them to go through that hell.
How many patients would we have to treat who then turn out to be in the top five percentile for survival for their stage of cancer for you to accept that there is something viable going on? FYI what we do has no side effects except for improved quality of life.
Or rather, "they have NO white blood cells or platelets left".
Start publishing case reports. You've already claimed that you have one with adequate medical documentation. If you can't loosen your grip on the kosmic mains supply long enough to write that up, you've got nothing except Marg hanging around babbling pathetically.
Ah so we've moved entirely from not providing evidence for anything to "bringing on the big guns" because Marg needs all the help she can get.
Also, is it me, or does it seem strange that patient confidentiality isn't upheld by these very 'noble', 'caring' healers?
@Bronze Dog
Well said, re: cards on the table. But she won't ever see past proving X makes Y valid. Black and white is right...
Judith,
But the paper you referred to is about the benefits of palliative care, not cancer treatment. Did you actually read the study? It has nothing to do with iatrogenic disease, except that early palliative care may allow a patient to come to terms with their impending death so they don't insist on continuing treatment past the point of diminishing returns. It is often the patient and their family that demand aggressive end-of-life care, by the way, though you seem to think this is always inflicted on unwilling patients by callous doctors who enjoy "torturing patients on their way out".
You grossly exaggerate the side effects of chemotherapy and radiotherapy; what you describe sounds more like cancer treatment 40 or 50 years ago, not "cancer treatment today". Burns from radiotherapy may indeed be a problem in a minority of patients, but you have to balance benefits against risks, and I don't want to get sidetracked. Since it currently seems the patient we have been discussing had pancreatic cancer, let's take a look at the experience of some patients on chemotherapy for pancreatic cancer.
A few years ago there was a clinical trial of an alternative treatment for pancreatic cancer compared with conventional cancer treatment. The alternative treatment (Gonzalez's enzymes, supplements, juices, organic diet and coffee enemas) was for all intents and purposes no treatment at all, so it offers us a useful way of comparing the outcome of treated and untreated patients.
The patients accepted into the trial "had to have a histologically confirmed adenocarcinoma of the pancreas that was inoperable because of advanced primary tumor or metastases (ie, stages II to IV)", which I think you would agree would have included the patient we have been discussing.
The results are very interesting; here are the points that struck me as relevant to this discussion:
The chemotherapy patients survived longer than the untreated (enzyme) patients, 3 times longer on average:
So chemotherapy extended life by nearly ten months on average.
Out of 23 patients on chemotherapy, 2 survived twice as long as the patient given energy healing. About 25% of the treated patients and 5% of the untreated patients were still alive after 20 months.
The side effects of the chemotherapy did not remotely resemble those you describe above; adverse events appeared in both groups, because cancer makes people very sick:
Quality of life was better in the chemotherapy group than in the no treatment group:
So over the first 6 months pain increased in the untreated patients, as you might expect, but it decreased in the chemotherapy patients. Perhaps this is due to different use of palliative care, but that does seem remarkable, the opposite of iatrogenesis you might say. Quality of life decreased in both groups, of course, but the difference between the groups is remarkable - see Fig. 3 in the study.
That seems a reasonable definition, but medicine is always about juggling risks against benefits. We can see from that study that chemotherapy for pancreatic cancer extends life and improves its quality. Where's the iatrogenic disease in that?
Citation? What cancer, what stage, what treatment?
Stage 2 to 4 pancreatic cancer has one of the worst outcomes of all cancers, and chemotherapy is less helpful than in many other cancers, so we are looking at the very worst case scenarios here. Yet half of these patients' lives were extended by nearly 10 months with chemotherapy. In non-small-cell lung cancer, another cancer with poor outcomes that responds poorly to chemotherapy, the systematic review I have repeatedly linked to above concluded:
It seems your alternative to conventional cancer treatment is to wave your hands over them while they die in agony. Do you actually understand what happens in untreated cancer? Has it even occurred to you to wonder what would have happened to the patients in the horror stories you relate if they had been left untreated?
Your claims about the efficacy and side effects of chemotherapy are demonstrably untrue for most patients, even in cancers for which it is least effective. By spreading these horror stories about chemotherapy and radiotherapy, you are deliberately trying to frighten sick and vulnerable people into making decisions that will have seriously detrimental effects on their lives. Not only that but you are doing so, it seems, with the intent of drumming up customers for your delusional energy healing business. I don't know if you are well-meaning but deluded, or cynical, uncaring and manipulative but the end result is the same. You and your ilk are the main reason for oncologists increasingly seeing the results of untreated cancers that they had previously only seen in old text books. As UK cancer surgeon Michale Baum wrote on a UK medical professional site:
Judith, and Marg, please take a long hard look at what you are doing, and the consequences. By frightening people away from life-saving treatment you are doing far more harm than good.
But you can. The Bengster sells DVDs.
There ya go Judith, the germ of a proper study, assuming you agree with what Marg claimed as quoted above.
It needs a wee tweaking to include people without injury and no verbal interaction so that you meet these two criteria as drawn from Marg's claim:
- you've been told the patient has an injury, nothing more
- you find it "just with your hands by feeling his or her energy".
If you'd like help, JREF will AND hand you a million bucks if you get better results than Emily Rosa provided using more than willing subjects.
That is until they were shown the results and also wondered who put a curious and scientifically literate 9 year old "up to it".
She tried for a bigger sample size by appealing to the woman who runs the National Hand-Waving Assoc. but of course was dismissed with a wave of the hand for being 9.
@flip, Bronze Dog
frustrating ain't it, they can't separate SBM from the players or understand our arguments are based on that premise - all we are asking is follow the same guidelines as SBM AND don't act like the dicks they keep harping on.
SBM, properly applied will keep you honest. Ironally, alties often argue "the baby & the bathwater" which is what these two are exactly proposing.
@Krebiozen:
"Burns from radiotherapy may indeed be a problem in a minority of patients, but you have to balance benefits against risks, and I don’t want to get sidetracked."
If only there were some regulatory body that required the reporting of improper nuclear medicine treatments so we would understand the causes and work to prevent their occurence.
Oh, wait --
http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/event-status/event/en.htm…
http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/event-status/event/en.htm…
Another checkmark for SBM putting ALL of its cards on the table.
Those of us who live in countries with nationalized health care remain bamboozled by those who think that any treatment that was effective and cost so little would NOT be pushed by our governments as a cost saving measure.....no instead we have the UK government getting out of the homeopathic business and the Canadian government NOT paying for all manner of quackery. Serioulsy, you alternative medicine 'advocates' should try and peddle your woo to these governments, because believe me, if there any chance that our health care system could save millions or billions of dollars by hand waving, they would pay for all the studies needed to prove this works........I wait with baited breath. *snark*
@Agashem: Thank you for bringing up nationalized health care in other countries. It's irritating that a lot of alties seem to think the world ends in an eternal waterfall just outside US borders.
Judith,
That depends on how many other patients you have treated who haven't done as well. You have only told us about the cases you consider successes, which I strongly suspect makes you as guilty of publication bias as the drug companies Marg complains about. How many terminal cancer patients have you treated in total? If you treat enough cancer patients you will find some that survive much longer than expected, and some that don't survive as long. It's how probability works.
The evidence you have presented so far doesn't even offer a ghost of a hint that energy healing has any effect compared to no treatment, much less over chemotherapy. In the study I mentioned in my last comment, 1 in 20 untreated patients and 1 in 4 chemotherapy-treated patients lived for 20 months, as long as your energy treated patient survived. If you treated 10 pancreatic cancer patients and they all lived 20 months, that would start to look interesting.
No one has ever been able to demonstrate even the existence of the 'healing energy' you claim to use, so the possibility that energy healing could work on anything, much less cancer, is vanishingly implausible. This means the quality of the evidence you need to provide has to be very high indeed for any serious researchers to concede that it might be worth looking at. That's what SBM is all about, convincing evidence and prior plausibility, and you have neither.
Marg tells us that in your experience palliative energy healing is more effective than palliative chemotherapy. Is that true, and if so on what do you base that conclusion? How many terminal cancer patients who rejected chemotherapy have you treated with energy healing, and how many chemotherapy patients did you compare them with? Where did you find these control patients? Or if you are comparing with published stats, what are your success rates? Do you have an anonymized list of all the cancer patients you have treated, their expected survival and how long they actually survived? How did you assess their quality of life and how did you compare that with those on chemotherapy?
If you can't answer these questions then you have no business making these claims.
If it offers false hope and dissuades patients from getting effective treatment then it does have side effects. What evidence do you have for improved quality of life? Compared to what? I would expect your patients to have a seriously reduced quality of life if they reject conventional treatment, however much you wave your hands over them.
The "no side effects" meme really irritates me because it's often tied into the denial of human complexity. Our bodies house a lot of interacting systems. A change in one thing is quite likely to affect several others, producing unintended effects. It only seems natural to me that medical treatments would have side effects, generally in proportion to the change being made. Weak treatments tend to have weak side effects and strong treatments tend to have strong side effects.
If something has no side effects, that's going to make me more skeptical of the main effect, especially since we know a lot about the human capacity for self-deception, confirmation bias, and the like. That capacity for self-deception is the reason we use science to prevent bias.
Oh look, I came across a systematic review of Biofield therapies (such as Reiki, therapeutic touch, and healing touch). Need I remind anyone that systematic reviews are, as Ben Goldacre pointed out, the best kind of evidence we have? Thought not.
So what did this systematic review find? Does energy healing extend the lives of cancer patients? Work better than chemotherapy? Improve their quality of lives?
Nope. These therapies are essentially no better than other therapies like massage or relaxation that are beneficial for pain and other symptoms with a large psychological component - the obvious conclusion is that 'biofield therapies' are just placebos. The review concludes:
Level 4 evidence is the lowest quality of evidence on their scale, by the way, so it's not even a very good placebo.
@Agashem
Here in Oz some things aren't covered (although there are clauses), like acupuncture and chiro.
http://www.humanservices.gov.au/customer/enablers/medicare/medicare/wha…
Sadly, the private insurance version does cover most woo:
http://www.medibank.com.au/healthcover/insurance/ultra-cover/
*For non-Australians, the private insurance is government-run, but separate to the public UHC insurance provided by Medicare. Medibank, the private one, is Australia's largest health insurer. So it's worth noting that the government offers two stances on non-SBM, one that clearly backs up Agashem's point. And it's good to point out that the woo stuff is also listed as extras, not under the basics plan. So not only would you have to pay to cover alt med, but you'd have to pay more than you would for SBM.
Fortunately this situation has one benefit: it proves alt-medders wrong when they complain about UHC cutting out other options. Health freedom is pretty much the standard here.
"So not only would you have to pay to cover alt med, but you’d have to pay more than you would for SBM."
Er, scratch that to say "some SBM".
Oh, dear, I just glanced at Judith's site and noticed the embedded video she has on "the science behind energy healing." I had not previously met one Claude Swanson, brave herald of the New Force Known As "Torsion." (As the saying goes, "that's not 'new', I've had red things for years.")
This no doubt dandy entry in the annals of scientific communication is brought to this plane courtesy of "JustEnergyRadio.com" (who knew?), which brave media outlet is still revealing the Moon landing hoax.
So I'm thinking that this is precisely the group of thinkers that I would like to entrust my health care to.
Agashem is slightly off aboot Canukistan. Healthcare is a provincial matter and Alberta is covering quackery @ 500 loonies/family/year
I may have mentioned that waaay back upstream,
If you think have been led down a certain path to believe the notions, potions and lotions sold by alternative medicine men will cure all that ails, go ahead and keeping buying the products.
They should not be covered by any public/private insurance, just like Ontario shouldn't have public schools of woo. On your own dime. Ramen.
@Krebiozen
You have two pancreatic cancer patients, One of them gets up from his deathbed to go home, stops needing morphine within five days of the start of the treatment, reverses his jaundice, goes back to having near normal blood test results, and his treatment team enthusiastically tell you they've never seen anything like it in decades of practice. The other outlives his prognosis by a year, lives an active life while you are treating him, and is, as you say, in the top five percentile for survival. A colleague's stage-4 small cell lung cancer patient outlives HIS prognosis by 34 months. A breast cancer patient's documented tumour disappears. Another breast cancer patient is downgraded from a a mastectomy to a lumpectomy because of a change in the tumour. We don't treat that many people with cancer. It's not like one, or two, or five in a hundred see anomalous results -- most do. After the first few you sit up and take notice. I would love to give you 20 pancreatic cancer patients in the top five percentile for survival -- but we don't get that many pancreatic cancer patients.
Judith, anyone can SAY they've had such amazing results. The difference is that people who HAVE such amazing results document them, and people who are only SAYING they have such impressive results make excuses like "we know the hegemonic medical establishment will never let the truth get out so we've never written up even one of these amazing cases we see on a regular basis."
@Antaeus
But even the ones who document them are not believed.
@Krebiozen
The chemo/radiation side-effects I described above, which you say were the norm 40 or 50 years ago but not now, all happened to people I know in the last couple of years. My antipathy to these treatments is not philosophical. Yes, I also know people who take one little chemo pill a day and have little more than tiredness to report. But I know more people who have experienced horrors. My own mother died after her first radiation treatment, which was meant to be "prophylactic" as at the time she had no detectable cancer. It was certainly prophylactic; she never had a chance to develop cancer again because she was dead within hours. When I asked her if the radiation was necessary, she told me "I trust this doctor with my life". The doctor saw her twice; once to order the tests and once to prescribe the radiation. I have good personal reasons to rail at the medical establishment.
Don't forget the meteorologists. Those clouds aren't going to dissolve on their own, after all.
Cards. Table. Face up.
Judith,
This patient? I have edited out the bits that are not relevant to his diagnosis and prognosis and, for those concerned, I note you have stated on your blog that details have been changed to preserve patient confidentiality:
I'm a bit confused by this, it doesn't seem to make sense. The patient suddenly becomes ill, is told he has days to live, but there is somehow time for chemotherapy to be tried but "quickly abandoned as hopeless". How long was chemotherapy tried for, before it was abandoned? Why did his doctors conclude it was hopeless? What were the ultrasound scan and biopsy results? When was energy healing started in relation to his diagnosis and the abandonment of chemotherapy?
You also wrote:
It sounds to me as if the cause of his jaundice was the head of the pancreas pressing on the bile duct, causing obstruction. That's one of the ways pancreatic cancer can be caught relatively early. I expect his alkaline phosphatase was grossly elevated with only minor elevation in his liver enzymes, which is what I have seen in many cases of cancer of the head of the pancreas, consistent with obstruction. I suspect the chemotherapy he was given shrank the pancreatic tumors enough to relieve the obstruction to his bile duct. This would remove the cause of his jaundice and weight loss, and might well allow him a few weeks of better health before he died That is the purpose of chemotherapy in pancreatic cancer, after all, and it is far more plausible than energy healing being effective.
A single case of a patient surviving stage 4 pancreatic cancer for ten weeks when untreated median life expectancy is 3-5 months isn't at all extraordinary. I don't know why his doctors told you and him that something unusual had happened, but on the face of it this doesn't seem at all unusual and certainly isn't good evidence for something as utterly implausible as energy healing.
Outliving his prognosis by a year is not unusual, neither is living an active life with a terminal cancer diagnosis, and being in the top 5% for survival is not at all unusual by definition - 1 in 20 patients will survive this long. I really don't understand why you think the energy healing had any effect on either of these patients. If they had gone into complete remission, perhaps, as that truly is unusual, but living within the expected range of survival? It's what you expect!
This is the patient who lived for 44 months after diagnosis? Although the median survival for extensive stage small cell lung carcinoma is only 8–13 months, 1–5% of patients treated with chemotherapy live 5 years (60 months) or longer. Another case within the expected range. Not remarkable, not evidence of magic.
Documented by biopsy I assume? This often happens naturally. It's one of the problems with mammography that overdiagnosis occurs when tumors that would have gone away on their own are detected. Not remarkable unless you can demonstrate this repeatedly.
Did they have chemotherapy which would have shrunk the tumor by any chance? If not and you have documented evidence, such as biopsy results and scans showing that the tumor shrank so much without chemotherapy that a mastectomy was no longer required, you should publish that case history.
An anomaly is "something that deviates from what is standard, normal, or expected". The results you have presented here, which I assume are the best evidence you have, are not anomalous, they are well within the expected range of results. I think you have fooled yourself with wishful thinking and confirmation bias.
How many cancer patients have you treated and what were the results? I see that you have plenty of excuses for your treatment not working - either they had resigned themselves to death, or they had conventional treatment, or they left it too late. Do you ignore these cases because you figure you know why they failed? If you include these cases, what does your success rate look like then?
@Krebiozen
What's conventional medicine's excuse?
Judith,
Excuse for what? For improving life expectancy and quality of life in the majority of patients who would otherwise die horribly?
Conventional medicine accepts that not all patients will benefit from chemotherapy, and uses scientific evidence to decide who gets what treatment, who is suitable for surgery etc. It does not exclude patients from the results of trials even if they have to drop out because they cannot tolerate a treatment or if the treatment fails, whatever the reason.
The way I'd say it: The "excuses" that do come up are generally documented and specific factors instead of generalized, inconsistently applied ad hoc hypotheses.
The rest of the time, the uncertain nature of reality covers it. We use scientific methodology to play the best odds we can find. But you can make all the best decisions and still lose through no fault of your own when probability and the unknown side against you.
So, on the experimental front you pooh-pooh the very notion by some sort of proxy asshurt, and on the theoretical front, you've got the "torsion" guy?
In another Feynman quotable,
You, Marg, and your fellow travelers have no such imagination, just a desperate attachment to the long-desiccated turd stick of animal magnetism. There is not a whit of novelty in any of this dismal rerun.
Documentation is the start of what you have to do to be believable. It's not the end.
What you are proposing is that you can revolutionize the world of medicine by proving to be true a modality of healing that has never had scientific validation before. Did you seriously expect that would be easy? That there wouldn't be systems in place to weed out the countless people who would claim to have such revolutionary proof but would be either fooling themselves or trying to fool everyone else?
It's like you're saying "I'm the fastest person on the planet! But no one will accept that I am!" And the response you get is, "Well, prove it! Go run a marathon or somethng!" And you say "That won't work; even when I run a marathon, I never get a prize!" Well, guess what - if you run marathons and you don't get the prize, maybe it's because you are not the fastest person on the planet after all?? Ya think?
I did it, I looked at Judith's Twitter feed. Note to Judith: That aphorism is from Bodhisattva Greetingcard (famously depicted in the "Cornflower Thangka"), not Gautama.
@Krebiozen
So if conventional medicine gives a pancreatic cancer patient 20 months of life and a small-cell lung cancer patient 44, with weeks of puking, weakness, skin eruptions and whatnot, that's peachy keen and laudable. If we do the same with no side effects, that's failure? Nicely spun, sir.
I think Marg is actually better at this than Judith, whose aura is beaming into my Third Eye with just the dishwater gray of venality.
When "we have the same rates of success as conventional medicine only with fewer side effects" is something you can back with actual solid data, it won't be called a failure. As long as it's something you're insisting the data would show if carefully collected and at the same time refusing to collect the data and instead merely waving around the most favorable anecdotes, most people will conclude that the success of your method exists solely in your mind.
I'm facepalming so hard right now. That's a lot of compacted wrongness and/or deceit in such a nice little package, including ignorance/denial of a point I made not too long ago about side effects and human complexity.
Judith,
Having personally been through double mastectomies and multiple associated surgeries, chemotherapy, and radiation, I can tell you one thing for certain. You're full of crap. You have absolutely no business "treating" any patient for ANY medical condition, and I hope the other readers here will join me in reporting your fradulent scammery to the FTC. Not that it'll likely do any good at all, but I'm always eager to speak out in any way I can against harmful fraudulent woo.
Have any of your "patients" ever taken legal action against you, Judith? Do you have a license to practice medicine? Malpractice insurance?
44 weeks, I meant
Nope, 44 months was right. Sorry.
Judith:
Thank you for admitting as much.
Judith,you are biased. I think I understand now why you are so unwilling to give up your bias.
However, knowing that you have this bias, you should be going out of your way to make sure that your assessments of your patients are not affected by your bias – you should be taking extra care to demonstrate that you have an objective point of view.
But you’re not. You continue to surround yourself with only those cases which you consider successes.
If you truly believe that your treatments benefit your patients, you owe it to the rest of the world to demonstrate that what you do goes beyond the placebo effect.
Judith, if you want to be taken seriously, you have to show the world that you can overcome your bias.
@Chemmomo
That's fair.
So, same s#it in a different bag. Judith, you tell me why the Canadian government doesn't make all cancer patient see energy healers? Simple question that demands a simple answer and if you try to tell me the entire Canadian government is in the pocket of big pharma, you lose.
@Judith
You may find this interesting. I got to link from another one of Orac's rants:
http://www.fda.gov/downloads/Drugs/GuidanceComplianceRegulatoryInformat…
I'm more inclined to call it an excuse than bias.
Jesus Christ. How stupid do you think your audience is, Marg? You go running to Judith, you try to interpose her site in sitcom-level parental-argument fashion, clam up for a while, and now you're going to pretend that you are exchanging novelties in this venue?
@Narad
Actually, it's the rest of you I wanted to read the contents of that particular little letter from the FDA on the subject of a pharmaceutical company misrepresenting a cancer drug in its advertising. I suppose I could have put it as a comment on Judith's blog, but then you wouldn't have seen it.
Sure thing, Marg. You'll have to pardon me if I continue to consider you as the wrong, yet more vividly entertaining, end of the pantomime horse.
@Narad
Of course you wouldn't dream of reading the thing itself. It might actually shake up your prejudices.
Marg, what's newsworthy about the FDA letter? It's hardly some big indictment or proof that "big pharma is bad."
They busted a manufacturer for making exaggerated claims about a drug. Isn't that exactly what the FDA is supposed to do?
@Narad, I usually completely agree with your posts, but not this time. I don't find Marg even marginally entertaining.
It's typical Marg, thenewme.
He/She thinks the FDA is 'useless' - except of course, when it's doing its job - and then they're being big meanieheads!
Is this the FDA warning letter that was posted on the blog the other day? If so, I read it then. Don't need to re-read it now in order to see Marg has nothing up her sleeves, nothing in her top hat, and no fancy evidence to pull out like a rabbit.
Ah Marg, you really are out of tricks aren't you?
Judith,
I'm not sure if you are joking, truly miss the point or are deliberately trying to distort the facts. Yes of course it's laudable to use the best treatment available, treatment that is supported by robust evidence. No it's not "peachy keen" that the best treatments we have for these cancers are not as effective as we would like and have some unpleasant side effects for some people*. I very much wish that we had better treatments for these cancers, with fewer side-effects, but we haven't yet. This is the best we currently have, though better treatments will eventually be found through real scientific research.
Firstly, you haven't the slightest bit of evidence that energy healing can do any better than no treatment at all, much less "do the same" as chemotherapy. A few of the untreated (enzyme) patients in the Gonzalez trial lived longer than your two miracle pancreatic cancer patients who, let's not forget, both had chemotherapy as well as energy healing. Can we conclude from this that no treatment (or enzyme treatment) is better than energy healing?
Secondly, the only information about this small-cell lung cancer patient I can find is from you and Marg on this comment thread. Is there any more information on this patient anywhere? Did he have chemotherapy for example? Some patients with small-cell lung cancer live for more than 18 years, do you really think less than 4 years is a miracle?
Thirdly, you are reported to have claimed that your patients do better with energy healing than with chemotherapy, not "the same" as chemotherapy, a claim for which you have so far presented no remotely convincing or even intriguing evidence at all.
I have spun nothing. I have stated the facts as I see them. It is you who are spinning, desperately, trying to distract from the fact that you have no evidence.
It's worth mentioning again that these are the two cancers with the worst prognosis, against which chemotherapy is least effective. There are several other cancers for which conventional treatment in general and chemotherapy in particular are very much more effective.
* You keep ignoring the study I linked to that found no difference in "side effects" between untreated pancreatic cancer patients and those on chemotherapy. Some of the terrible side effects you ascribe to chemotherapy are the effects of the cancer itself.
Judith,
Exploring your blog has taken me on a weird journey through anger, disbelief and hilarity.
Anger at a plethora of blatantly inaccurate and misleading passages like this:
Yet as we have seen this is not true. Palliative care is by definition aimed at relieving and preventing the suffering of patients, not at extending life. When a tumor starts to interfere with the body's functioning this can cause a great deal of pain and suffering; preventing or at least minimizing this is the whole point of palliative chemotherapy and radiotherapy. Sometimes palliative treatment has the unplanned additional benefit of extending life, but its purpose is to make the patient more comfortable. Clinical trials of palliative care specificially look at reduction of pain and suffering, and treatments are only used if they do so. As you wrote yourself patients having palliative care, "lived longer and had better quality of life than patients who received conventional cancer treatment alone".
Again I find myself struggling to express myself without lapsing into profanity. You are actually trying to discourage cancer patients from having treatment that reduces their pain and suffering. Is this just ignorance? If not why?
There's also this which has been debunked many times before:
You have quoted this from a book called "The Mythology of Science-Based Medicine". I suppose it shouldn't surprise me that it didn't occur to you to check the source. Would it surprise you to find out that these common medical treatments include "many treatments that come under the description of complementary medicine (e.g., acupuncture for low back pain and echinacea for the common cold)"?
As for disbelief and hilarity, I had to laugh at this:
I don't need to explain to regular readers here just how ridiculous that is, though not too surprising coming from a science fiction writer. For icing on the cake you added:
I can hear poor Bohr turning in his grave, or perhaps laughing, I'm not sure which.
you've got to be kidding
Here's an interesting link: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-20270400 . Basically, they're experimenting with making chemotherapy less arduous for the patient by isolating the organ being treated from the rest of the body, and treating just that organ (in this case, the liver) with the chemotherapy drugs.
OT for this thread? Perhaps. OTOH, it does highlight the fact that SBM keeps asking "how can we do this better? How can we be more effective? How can we reduce side effects?" while HWBM (Hand-Waving-Based Medicine) simply refuses to collect the data that might suggest the modality is less than perfect.
Marg, Judith, when are you going to stop trying to tear down the pharmaceutical companies? They're irrelevant. Of course, that's been pointed out repeatedly, so don't feign ignorance. You're using lies and innuendo about them and our devotion to truth to distract from the fact that you don't have good evidence for energy healing.
You only have anecdotes that fall well within our realm of expectation, yet you attempt to lie to our virtual faces about what we expect.
Stop trying to tear everything down in the name of your intolerant ideology and try to do something constructive.
@Bronze Dog
My intolerant ideology? LOL. Pot, meet kettle.
Intolerant ideology is a very good description. You think you shake our world view, Marg, when it seems quite clear reading through this thread that it is yours that is threatened.
@Agashem
Et tu. Pot, meet kettle.
Really? That's your defence? After all these days and days? Come on, I have heard better arguments among school children. You have shaken nothing in me, so if you think you have, you should think again. And hard. Oh, and I asked a while back why nationally funded health care systems wouldn't jump all over this 'cheap' treatment. Don't use the pharmashill gambit because there are many many countries with nationalized health care and they can't all possibly be in the pocket of the pharmaceuticals.......
Marg, do you listen to yourself? Or is this the old "it's bigotry to hate bigots" thing?
You've been spouting all sorts of propaganda memes that seem designed to demonize us because we don't subscribe to your ideology. You engage in black and white thinking. You keep trying to associate everything you don't like with pharmaceutical companies the way I've seen wingnuts try to associate everyone they don't like with the Muslim Brotherhood.
As for tolerance, I'm willing to entertain new ideas if they have good evidence to support them, which is what we've been asking for all this time. Instead of providing evidence, you continue your verbal rampage against every real or imagined flaw in the pharma companies even though we've made it clear that it doesn't help the case of energy medicine. I want my disbelief challenged, and you deliberately avoid giving me anything challenging or unexpected.
I doubt you can even articulate what my ideology is or my positions are, despite all the stuff I've written here.
Marg - pointing out the flaws in others does nothing to support your own claims, especially when we are aware of these flaws
in fact, this tactic shows you to be a delusional ignoramus
do a proper study and shut us up because you've offered nothing more than what any good snake-oil salesman would say, and we've heard it all - now at least, Andromeda is in the palm of my hand, whiskey tango foxtrot
Antaeus Feldspar: Wow! That’s really cool!
My grandmother lived through most of the 20th century (she died in AD2000 at 94). She witnessed a world transformed by scientific advances including human beings achieving flight, complex calculations given to machines not subject to human error, and several revolutions in how we record data.
I have often wondered what’s next. In the 90s, the advances didn’t seem to be coming as fast as they had in the earlier part of the century.
It seems to me that we were laying the infrastructure that allows leaps and bounds that may be coming up, and your link shows one of them.
Thank you.
@Krebiozen
Thank you for articulating that palliative chemotherapy is only meant to lessen pain and suffering and not intended to extend life. So in essence your objection to energy healing for cancer patients for whom curative chemotherapy is no longer an option is that it would deprive them of the salutary and enjoyable effects of palliative chemo.
To clarify, in the scenario which I propose (and which we have already seen in practice) patients we treat are under the care of an oncologist. The oncologist has told them palliative chemo is their only option and will be deployed at some point in the future when it becomes necessary. The patient continues to see the oncologist regularly to monitor his or her progress (or decline). So long as the patient is functioning well and not in pain, the oncologist keeps telling him to carry on with what he is doing as it seems to be working. Only when the patient's condition worsens to a certain point is palliative chemo put into use. I see no downside to putting off that time; neither do most doctors I know.
As to you making a value judgment that "energy healing doesn't work", I would say allow the patient to make that judgment. Trust me, if a patient doesn't feel better after their treatment, they don't come back for more. They see no more point in wasting money than you would.
Oh, Judith. If you don't publish specific clinical information about the rate of patients who don't 'feel better' after your care, how can you expect patients to make an initial informed judgement on whether or not to accept your treatment??
It's utter nonsense. What you're basically saying is 'patients must pay me for an initial treatment, without knowing a baseline rate of success, before they find out if the treatment will be successful.'
You only operate under the guise of 'patient choice,' but in reality what you do is anything but. You don't want patients to 'waste money,' but you don't give them the option of deciding for themselves, based on actual data, whether or not the initial appointment would be a waste of money too.
Judith,
You're welcome, but let's be clear, it is provento lessen pain and suffering.
My objection is to you telling desperate cancer patients lies. You wrote, of palliative treatment (not just chemotherapy):
I suppose you would prefer cancer patients to "enjoy" untreated cancer without any palliation at all. Yet you also write:
That's not the point. If energy healing really did extend the time until palliative treatment is required I would be in favor of it, of course. In fact I have no objection at all to you waving your hands over whoever you want, with their permission. What I find despicable is that you find it necessary to be dishonest in your efforts to persuade people to reject conventional treatment that has been proven to be beneficial. You don't even have the decency to admit that's what you are doing, even when it is obvious to everyone.
Value judgment or not, of course it doesn't work, because this isn't Narnia. Tell the patient the truth, show them the evidence, not cherry-picked, biased anecdotes and testimonials and then let them make that decision.
That's obviously untrue. What about people who come back to chemotherapy even though it has side effects? And what about your pancreatic cancer patient who quit energy treatment when he realized it wasn't working? Oh I forgot, he was persuaded to have chemotherapy even though the energy treatment was working.
Maybe they believed you when you told them it would help them and that palliative chemotherapy has severe side effects and involves "significant suffering", whereas dying of untreated, unpalliated cancer is just peachy.
You're living down to one of my stereotypes formed from years of experience with altie trolls: The Ayn Rand Altie. Let the buyer beware, let non-experts fall prey to self-deception, misinformation, and marketing spin. Somehow the invisible hand of the market will magically pick out the best treatments out of the noise because good products never fail in the market and scams never work.
One criticism I've had about Ayn Rand is that she pretty much advocates a society founded on Mary Sueism, where everyone is capable of absolute objectivity and is an expert in every subject. Result: if they make a bad purchasing decision, it's their fault for not having the time and resources to do the clinical trials themselves.
"Feeling better" isn't a reliable means of telling if a treatment is working because it's subjective and can be triggered for reasons other than improvement in their medical condition. The contrary assumption reeks of denial of human complexity. We are not toasters.
It's self-serving to recommend prospective customers buy the product to evaluate its effectiveness, especially when it's a medical treatment. It should be up to the producers to prove their product works through objective scientific tests before they're allowed to market it. That's what consumer protection is about. Let the seller beware.
Naturally, it's this sort of thing that convinces me that alties are one of the best things to happen to the pharmaceutical companies: If alties don't have to jump through the consumer protection hoops we demand, that's going to set a precedent for the pharma companies to skip them, too. If that nightmare were to happen worldwide, that'd severely limit my options for medical help, since there'd be no one interested in earning my trust.
Which is exactly what Big Pharma did in my case. Anecdotal, sure but the ladies love 'em. I was made fully aware of the possible dangers and unpleasantness of it all.
Also, not the first talking monkey to be a lab rat after the mice and dogs. I might have passed if that were the case.
Alt-Randians, spot on Bronze Dog. Yes, feeling better isn't being better. They aren't the same thing. I mentioned an ALS death and a cancer death some time ago. They both had periods of feeling better - even though Da lasted only 5 months - but in the end...
The usual time for ALS is two years. Who's waving their hands over Hawking? Whoever did it over my friend sucked.
Caveat emptor applies to cat food not healthcare
@Bronze Dog @Krebiozen
To a terminal cancer patient "feeling better" means a heck of a lot. Many of them have such pain that morphine can't manage it and they are counting the minutes to the next shot; if you can take that pain and make it negligible or even manageable they won't care one whit whether you have any studies behind what you do, they just care that they are not in pain.
@Bronze Dog
The people who died from Vioxx, whose children were born without arms because of Thalidomide, who became addicted to the Oxycontin they were taking for back pain, etc., found out the hard way that caveat emptor indeed does apply to healthcare.
The last bit was meant for @al kimeea, not @Bronze Dog.
Judith re: Vioxx, thalidomide, and oxycontin vs caveat emptor.
Your criticism is hollow: all those people taking those drugs “felt better.”
@Al Kimeea
I've suggested that numerous times. I don't think I ever got a reason why she hasn't done it. Or why she hasn't left to do it.
Except of course the subtext that science is a bad paradigm and is therefore not something she wants to be a part of. Up until it's science that she thinks proves her point.
It's quite clear that we're the open-minded ones: we ask for things that would convince us they're right, but all they do is ignore it.
@Judith
Now I see why Marg uses you as an advocate. You both share a common fallacy that anecdotes = data.
And if they get better, they have no need to come back either.
That's always the way it seems. "Science has it's place" which appears to be as far away from insert fantasy item here even as they market their potions, notions & lotions, books, optical discs, yaps etc. in sciencey ways.
Science isn't the problem, Big Pharma and the economic model of medicine for profit uber alles is the issue - Dr. Oz has his wife wave her hands as an additional profit stream while he cuts chests open.
And the things mentioned by JudithMarg happen. The real medical industry needs to be more open among other things for gov't to more easily keep them honest. But then, regulation and Big Gov't are bad for business.
Yes, the ladies could easily show their work using a tool known to be reliable even if others using it aren't, and instead choose to denigrate the opposition - Big Pharma and science by extension.
I was on oxycontin for less than a month. I stopped taking it because I thought it was gonna kill me. Before it got that bad, it helped with the pain but I didn't enjoy the feeling of it even when ameliorated by herb. Oxycodone was much better and herb varies by variant as pain relief. Eating it would be a better option - brownies anyone - but you'd also be incapacitated. And it cures/prevents cancer, I read it on the internet.
Interesting: to us, science is the theme and we open up and place new things in that spectrum. To them, fantasy is the theme where anything is possible because well, accepting everything is more important. And science is just one of those things that kind of, somewhat gets slotted in like a book on an overstuffed shelf, partly falling off it.
I disagree that an economic model is the main issue. As long as government entities, insurance companies, and medical-related businesses fall for the argument from popularity it will continue. The issue is education. Then policies will be written that are far more stringent because fewer people will have tolerance for "other ways of knowing".
Incidentally, my first and only time watching Dr Oz on TV here - he gets an afternoon slot on weekdays - was him saying you can tell what's wrong with your body just by... sniffing your own pee. I was always wary of his show due to the comments about him on this blog and elsewhere but as soon as I saw that I had enough evidence to go "what an idiot".
@flip - the economic model was meant in the context of the nasty bits about medicine - Oxy, etc - haphazardly going to market to satisfy the rush to profit. And to show it can incorporate wu.
Hard to argue with what you say aboot education, but I think it is undermined by the idea that faith is a virtue.
Oz recently had psychics speaking to the dead as therapy. I've only taken Psychology 101, but I think the technical term for that treatment is batshit
Judith,
The effect of energy healing on pain is not what we have been discussing. The issue is whether energy healing can have any objective effects on a cancer patient's outcomes. Also, your unethical habit of making up lies about chemotherapy to try to dissuade cancer patients from having it.
However, since you have brought it up, I don't care one whit how much you wave your hands over a cancer patient with their consent, as long as they are getting adequate medical care, or have made an informed decision not to get it. If they experience pain relief that's great, as long as it doesn't mask an underlying problem or discourage them from getting medical attention. Placebos can be dangerous in that way, making an asthma patient feel better, for example, but having no effect on their airways at all.
But is energy healing really as effective a painkiller as opiates, as you imply?
Let's compare the analgesic efficacy of therapeutic touch, and methadone for cancer pain. Here's a Cochrane review of touch therapies for pain including Healing Touch, Therapeutic Touch and Reiki,. that looked at acute and chronic pain including cancer pain. Here's a Cochrane review of methadone for cancer pain.
The Cochrane review of touch therapies found that:
That's about a 10% reduction in pain, more or less. Cochrane called for further studies as it almost inevitably does (though not so much more recently).
The methadone effects were reported differently, in one study "a clinically relevant pain response was considered to be a 20% reduction in baseline pain score on a zero to ten patient-reported Numerical Rating Scale", with about 75% of patients achieving this with methadone or morphine after 8 days, though this declined to about 50% over time. In another study all patients reported at least a 50% reduction in pain with methadone.
It would seem from this that touch therapies are considerably less effective at reducing pain than opiates, and do not produce a clinically relevant pain response.
Still, if you are in pain even a small reduction may be welcome, but there are lots of other non-medical interventions that may help to reduce pain to a similar degree; massage, relaxation and guided imagery for example. I haven't seen any evidence that therapeutic touch (or any other energy healing techniques) can do better than them, and they have the advantage of not pretending to work by magic.
@Krebiozen
I removed the sentence that you object to from the blog post. It was unnecessary and indeed you are right that I don't want to discourage people from having treatment that could help them.
The people we treated were already on morphine derivatives and still in considerable pain. After treatment they reported considerable pain relief and told us that the pain relief lasted into the next day. Our first pancreatic cancer patient, who was expected to die in a few days, was on a morphine pump. After we started treating him, he gradually decreased his use of morphine until he stopped needing it altogether after five days. He had weeks of pain relief. That's some placebo effect. And if you could have it with massage, relaxation, and guided imagery, why aren't these things being used?
Judith,
Thank you, and kudos to you for admitting you were wrong. I respect that.
Your anecdote, while impressive, is just an anecdote. As I have mentioned before I suspect his previous chemotherapy may have been responsible for the results you reported, including a reduction in pain, from shrinking his tumors.
They should be, and are being introduced in many hospitals. Pain management in medicine is still quite primitive in many respects and there is enormous room for improvement. Things are getting better, but slowly. Here's a summary of what nurses are taught about pain control in cancer - you can see how things should be done, though I know that isn't always the case in practice.
Judith, you very nearly made my point for me, and I don't think you noticed. We need regulatory oversight in order to catch bad things like the problems with Vioxx and issue recalls. We also need regulatory oversight and peer review so that we can have confidence that treatments will be tested before they're marketed.
I'm not willing to give the pharmaceutical companies a free pass. You presented one of the reasons why I consider it a bad idea to give them a free pass.
Now, here's the hard part: If I don't want to give pharmaceutical companies a free pass from testing and oversight by regulatory agencies and the scientific community, why should I give you a free pass? What makes you so special?
What makes you think they'er not being used where appropriate?
Pharmaceutical compounds are poisons that can cause serious harm. Energy therapies at worst are ineffective.
[blockquote]Pharmaceutical compounds are poisons that can cause serious harm. Energy therapies at worst are ineffective.[/blockquote]
Firstly, are all pharmaceutical compounds poisons? Citations needed.
Secondly, How can you tell energy therapies cannot harm? I asked the same thing from Marg waaaaay upthread, and received no answer. Treating hypertension, could it be possible to accidentally lower it too much, or to push it even higher? Relieving inflammation, what stops you from releasing clots into circulation? Removing pain, could you be masking a serious, acute life threatening emergency? A patient comes to you complaining of recurring stabbing pain on his side. How can you tell during routine session it's not lung cancer?
If treating people with energy treatments involves manipulating their energy fields, why couldn't you accidentally manipulate the fields further from "healthy" state?
If you do no record keeping and follow ups, how can you be certain energy healing doesn't make a patient more susceptible to heart attacks in 5 years time?
Dang. Using formatting from a different forum.
Casting spell Summon Review button.
......
Casting unsuccessful.
@Judith - ever heard the term "quantity makes the poison?" Water is poison at high enough doses.....
Nice that you can at least admit that energy therapies can be "ineffective." Care to bring any evidence to the table to show that they are "effective" in any way?
Judith - pharmaceutical compounds can be poisonous at certain dosages, but are shown to be of benefit for specific conditions when taken at appropriate dosages.
Energy therapies at BEST are ineffective. At worst they drain the patient's bank account, cause them to delay or avoid effective treatments, and still be ineffective.
If you have high quality data that shows that energy treatments statistically provide better outcomes than a suitable placebo, please share.
And Judith regurgitates an absolutist decree. Surprise, surprise. Black and white thinking at its finest. Doesn't even pay lip service to the complexities of circumstances, human variability, dose-response, relative risks and benefits, or anything. Statements like that are what convince me your philosophy is inherently intolerant.
Assuming we're talking about chemotherapy, only if by 'serious harm' one means extending survival time post diagnosis, reducing risk of cancer recurring following surgery, improving quality of life, and for some types of cancers (e.g., testicular cancer, non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, etc.), actually acheiving a cure
Actually, at worst they do serious harm: they've been seen to result in patients delaying or completely failing to seek getting effective treatment for their disease, abandoning SBM treatments (i.e. treatments which although they may cause side effects have been shown to work) to pursue alternative treatments which while they don't produce side effects have never been shown to be of benefit.,
And at best, energy healing has been shown to be no more effective than are placebo's, meditation or massage at making the patient feel better, and even then they've never been shown to do anything to address the underlying pathophysiology of disease.
Just ask your buddy Marg--after all, she's the one who keeps telling us the single best evidene for energy healing's effectiveness she's aware of are the studies by Bengston which showed energy healing was exactly as effective at curing cancer in mice as no treatment of any kind whatsoever.
Fresh meat for y'all to chew on; I'm certain we'll be hearing about this from the Latest Suspects who accept it at face value soon: http://news.msu.edu/story/ancient-foot-massage-technique-may-ease-cance…
Um, this is the evidence for the ancient Egyptian roots of reflexology? That's embarrassing even for a university press-release factory.
It's a wonder any of you ever manage to make it out the door.
You can't even get the marks to come to the seance at your Portal House of Multiversal Energy, Marg? You're not doing it right.
Not even trying anymore, Marg? I have no idea what you're even trying to get at with this. I think it may be an insult of some kind?
I think she's implying that being sensibly cautious about medical claims is akin to being afraid of everything. Because, you know, it's unreasonable to ask her to live up to the same standards we want for other medical claims.
Pretty typical Randroid meme about "nanny states" in my experience. We're not Mary Sue enough to have infinite time and resources to research every product we might buy, so we're scum dragging down the "free" market with our concerns about safety, efficacy, and implied warranties. We're just supposed to surrender our ability to have informed choice, blindly trust them, and give them our money with no reasonable expectations of anything. We're just lowly consumers who exist to buy their product and nothing more.
@Al Kimeea
Ok, sorry I misunderstood you.
And I agree with you about faith: but again, if you educate people, then hopefully 'faith' will be more about hoping for things but being aware of the limitations of the universe and the problems of human biases. We need to replace the word 'faith' with 'trust', perhaps.
Also, agreement for the batshit psychic stuff. The sad part is that if it's promoted by Oprah, it *must* be right for you. People honestly need to stop falling for the argument from (daytime TV) authority. And also the "but she's done so much good" fallacy. Oz and the many other shows out there are an example of the media needing more conscience on what they present and less looking at the bottom line.
@Judith
Funny how many of these compounds exist in nature and the human body itself. I thought you were all for natural remedies?
@Marg
It’s a wonder you ever manage to figure out how to use a computer. Science made it: surely you could just channel your thoughts to us instead?
Test, please ignore - I've written a standalone RI comment previewer and want to check it works OK.
Simple HTML that works on RI (you can copy and paste this text):
bold
italics
strikethrough
underline
(adds new line without CR)
link text
I got fed up with only noticing my typos once I had posted my comments on RI, so I have written a very simple standalone Windows-based program to preview them first. If anyone's interested you can download it here - it's free.
Here's a better place to download the previewer that doesn't requires signing up to download the file, which is free, but irritating.
@Flip
Funny how many of these compounds are adulterated from nature because natural compounds can't be patented & therefore the pharmaceutical companies can't make money from them.
You fail basic economics, Marg.
Patents aren't necessary to make a profit. All they need is the ability to produce and market it for less than the price they can sell it for. That's what it means to make a profit.
A patent just means that one company gets first dibs on selling the product or using a method of production. Then when the patent expires, other companies get to make generic substitutes that are functionally identical.
If pharmaceutical companies can't make a profit off of herbal treatments, how do the herbal supplement producers?
Marg, you have turned into the reiki version of Yosemite Sam. I invite you to investigate the history of marketing exclusivity and patents involving taxol. Or figure out
why pharmaceuticals that are out of patent mysteriously continue to be manufactured. Or be swallowed by a sinkhole or something. None of this affects in the slightest the fact that you are willing to take money for occultist horseshit and are no better than Madame Zelda and Her Crystal Ball above the convenience store.
It's funny how often that old canard about patents comes up. Boiron has a turnover of 313 million Euros (about $400 million) and they sell mostly sugar pills and water.
By the way, as this article points out, it's not true that you cannot patent natural compounds.
@Krebiozen
Further to palliative chemotherapy and end of life care:
http://www.clinicaloncology.com/ViewArticle.aspx?d=Solid+Tumors&d_id=14…
To wit:
[T]here comes a time when further chemotherapy not only is useless, it even may be counterproductive. “There’s a very predictable pattern of functional decline in cancer patients in the last two months of life, and when they hit that curve, chemotherapy is largely futile, assuming they’ve never been on it before, and this isn’t a brand-new cancer. If they’ve been through multiple treatments and on treatment they’re still declining, then it’s time to stop,” Dr. Weissman said.
The problem is recognizing when that time has come—when the “cure” has become worse than the disease. “Giving chemotherapy to people with poor ECOG [Eastern Cooperative Oncology Group] performance status [PS] is more likely harmful than beneficial,” Dr. Smith said. “That is, if you are ECOG PS 3—in a bed or chair more than half the time, and the cancer is really interfering with daily living—the NCCN [National Comprehensive Cancer Network] guidelines call for a switch to non–chemo-based palliative care.”
But that’s not what’s happening, said Alexi Wright, MD, a gynecologic oncologist and instructor in medicine at Harvard Medical School in Boston, who is researching chemotherapy at the end of life as part of a grant from the National Palliative Care Research Center. “It’s clear that the use of chemotherapy within the last few weeks of life is increasing, even though it’s often painful, burdensome and expensive.”
In fact, research into end-of-life care in oncology has found that extensive use of chemotherapy in end-stage cancer can shorten life, rather than extend it. According to Dr. Smith, studies show that patients who use hospice for even a single day live longer than those who have never used hospice. “The best explanation is that—since in the U.S., hospice and chemotherapy are rarely used together—patients who keep getting chemotherapy may be dying earlier due to complications from treatment.”
A randomized controlled trial by Temel et al (N Engl J Med 2010;363:733-742, PMID: 20818875) among lung cancer patients at Massachusetts General Hospital supports this theory. Those who were randomized to early palliative care plus usual oncology care lived 2.7 months longer than those who got usual oncology care only (P=0.02). “The palliative care group also had better symptom management and less depression, and the caregivers fared better afterward—maybe because they were prepared, or their loved one died at home rather than in the ICU [intensive care unit], intubated,” Dr. Smith said. These results are consistent with the idea, he noted, that early palliative care and usual oncology care improve medical outcomes, and that continuous chemotherapy worsens them.
Chemotherapy usually is incompatible with hospice care, and patients often are forced to choose, Dr. Wright said. “Our research has found that patients who get chemotherapy at the end of life have lower rates of hospice use, and more aggressive care.”
@Judith - I wonder how many people will continue to pursue aggressive treatment because they want to - rather than accept the fact they are going to die.
Doctors aren't holding patients down & treating them without consent (of either themselves or their families).
These decisions aren't made in a vacuum and you shouldn't act like they are.
@Lawrence
I merely quoted.
@Lawrence
FYI: http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1204410
1800 here we come and still no credible evidence these scallywags have mystical healing energy powers beyond the science of us mere mortals
@Judith,
What's your point with this article? That end-of-life chemotherapy isn't always or necessarily the best option for a cancer patient? That palliative care can be a good thing?
How does this say anything at all about the efficacy of reiki?
@thenewme
@Krebiozen castigated me for providing false information in my blog when I said that end-of-life palliative chemotherapy caused suffering and shortened lives (or something to that effect). I obligingly removed the sentence he objected to. But then I found this article, which corroborated what I said, with quotes from MDs who interpreted the relevant study exactly as I did. So I posted the information for @Krebiozen.
"@Krebiozen" at the top meant that I was responding to Krebiozen.
not like it's a private conversation Mme. Hornswoggler
@Judith,
I don't think this article corroborates what you're saying. And even if it did say that end-of-life palliate chemotherapy causes suffering and shortens lives, how do you jump from that to "....so therefore, my magic energy Reiki woo eliminates suffering and lengthens lives?"
You're a fraud, plain and simple, no matter how you try to spin it.
@thenewme
I don't recall throwing personal insults your way.
@Judith,
Your scammy and fraudulent promotion of woo to cancer patients IS an insult, to me personally and to other cancer patients who deserve real treatment and intellectually honest providers.
It's not about personal insults. It's about facts.
*****************************************************
Definition of FRAUD: fraud/frôd/
Noun:
Wrongful or criminal deception intended to result in financial or personal gain.
A person or thing intended to deceive others, typically by unjustifiably claiming or being credited with accomplishments or qualities.
Synonyms:
cheat - deceit - deception - swindle - humbug - fake
**************************************************************
might you if claims he made like you
And so now @you're #appending a snabel-a (you know who you are) to every #mention of a #name? This isn't @Twitter.
Re: "might you if claims he made like you..."
Huh?
@Narad - OT, but thanks! I had to look up "snabel." Ahhh, the things I learn here at RI!
@ The new me
what is a snabel?
Alain
Alain,
It's the name of the "at" symbol. Who knew?
Judith,
You are still confusing chemotherapy that is intended to extend life with palliative chemotherapy that is intended to make the process of dying more comfortable.
@Krebiozen
I am not. Read the article. It's doctors that are saying that there is a time to stop palliative chemotherapy because it is no longer helpful and may do more harm than good.
To wit:
“Giving chemotherapy to people with poor ECOG [Eastern Cooperative Oncology Group] performance status [PS] is more likely harmful than beneficial,” Dr. Smith said. “That is, if you are ECOG PS 3—in a bed or chair more than half the time, and the cancer is really interfering with daily living—the NCCN [National Comprehensive Cancer Network] guidelines call for a switch to non–chemo-based palliative care.”
And yet:
“It’s clear that the use of chemotherapy within the last few weeks of life is increasing, even though it’s often painful, burdensome and expensive.”
"... patients who keep getting chemotherapy may be dying earlier due to complications from treatment.”
This is not making dying more comfortable. I am beginning to wonder just what kind of experience you have with this. The notion of palliative chemotherapy making dying more comfortable is simply absurd. Sure, let's take a cancer ravaged body that is on its last few breaths and throw in some poison for good measure so the patient can feel better. Why not?
Parsomony requires me to conclude that Judith's current, repetitive, line of complaint reduces to nothing other than wanting a "piece of the action."
I'd still like to hear Judith's explanation for why energy therapies can't do no harm?
I asked the same thing from Marg waaaaay upthread, and received no answer (apart from "they can't because Marg assumes they can't").
Imagine treating someone for hypertension. Do you think it could be possible to accidentally lower it too much, or to push it even higher? If not, what mechanisms are in place to prevent it?
Relieving inflammation, what do you think stops your energy healing from releasing clots into circulation?
While removing pain, could you be masking a serious, acute life threatening emergency? A patient comes to you complaining of recurring stabbing pain on his side. How can you tell during routine session it’s not lung cancer?
Assume you treat a patient and believe you cured his pain and discomfort. A few weeks later s/he runs into you and happens to mention s/he stopped his medication becaue you cured her/him. What would you respond?
If treating people with energy treatments involves manipulating their energy fields, why couldn’t you accidentally manipulate the fields further from “healthy” state? What's there to stop it?
If you do no record keeping and follow ups, how can you be certain energy healing doesn’t make a patient more susceptible to heart attacks in 5 years time?
@thenewme
say it like Yoda, it''l make more sense
snabel, learned something new off this thread
@gaist
they are in tune with the universe, silly, and so with their patients marks' bodies and the bodies just know how much lovin they needs and takes no more
Judith,
I couldn't access your link, but I think I found the same article here. I think you have misunderstood that article, which is about the appropriate time to stop palliative chemotherapy. It doesn't say that palliative chemotherapy is bad per se as you suggested when you wrote:
On the contrary, it says that:
It even points out that there are clear NCCN guidelines for when it is time to "switch to non–chemo-based palliative care". It doesn't say that palliative chemotherapy should never be given at all, which is what you appear to be suggesting. I have been looking at the NCCN guidelines for palliative care, and they are clearly based on the best evidence available. I think they should be followed.
It has nothing to do with my experience of this and everything to do with what the best evidence tells us. Look at the Gonzalez trial of stage 4 pancreatic cancer in which the chemotherapy group reported a greatly improved quality of life over the group who were only treated with juices and supplements.
The bottom line is that patients should be able to make an informed decision about what treatment they receive. You are still trying to scare people away from palliative chemotherapy altogether with inaccurate statements like:
That's not true. There are times when palliative chemotherapy has clear benefits. It is these blatantly untrue statements you persist in making that I object to.
@Marg
Way to miss the point, yet again.
If you can't make any money from natural compounds, how do the alt-med companies work? Half of my pharmacy is full of these natural 'remedies' and funnily enough I don't see any of the manufacturers going bankrupt.
Secondly, you are once more proving to be full of fallacies: the periodic table is the periodic table, whether it's in the body, pristine plants picked from the ground, or in little white pills. The only difference between the pills and downing a herbal 'remedy' is that you know exactly how much the dosage is *every single time* - oh, and it's been studied for both efficacy and safety.
If pharmaceuticals are poison, as Judith puts it, then so are bananas, your own body, and dihydrogen monoxide.
But you know, that's been explained a billion times already, so I'm not sure you or any other woo peddler has been paying attention. This is once more, basic high school science here, which you managed to forget/not learn.
Also, what everyone else said.
And hey, what's this?
Yet another tour of distractions away from the fact that MARG, the contemptible purse-snatcher of science, HAS NO EVIDENCE THAT ENERGY HEALING WORKS. Cause you know, complaining about pharma conspiracies is exactly the same as providing evidence.
It's like Marg has picked up the handback for fallacies and canards and is trying all of them out to see which one sticks...
Handback = handbook.... I'm now officially downloading the preview file! Thanks Krebiozen!
@Krebiozen
Clearly you have NO experience with cancer patients at the end of their life. By the time they get to the very final stages they no longer have the kidney and liver function needed to process the poisons in chemotherapy through their bodies. At that point they would be far better off with a Reiki practitioner waving his or her hands over them, even for the placebo effect. There is no placebo effect from poisons your body can no longer process, only misery.
Yes, the bottom line is that patients should be able to make an informed decision about what treatment they receive, but their options should also include energy treatments.
The point the article makes is that even though there are clear guidelines for chemotherapy should no longer be used, it is being used, ever more frequently.
Did you notice this bit in the article?
“The forces pushing people to receive treatments are overwhelming. They include everything from the societal view that you can’t ever give up, which is a very big reason people continue on treatments, to family pressure, to the increasing availability of drugs,” Dr. Weissman said. “If there are more drugs available, people feel like there are more options. And then there are financial incentives for oncologists who make more money based on the chemotherapy they [provide]. You have a whole gamut of forces pushing people toward treatment, and there’s very little push in the opposite direction. It’s hard for patients and families to say that it’s time to stop. Oncologists have been very poor at having these discussions.” (emphasis mine)
"for when chemotherapy should no longer be used, it is being used beyond that point, ever more frequently."
@Judith - how exactly does the fact that "end of life" decisions can be improved upon mean that "energy healing" actually works?
"Yes, the bottom line is that patients should be able to make an informed decision about what treatment they receive, but their options should also include other scientifically proven treatments and advice about both the benefits and the risks."
FTFY Judith.
.
Citation's needed, judith.
How can they make an informed decision about energy healing, with poeple like you and marg spreading mis-information regarding its efficacy? Or do you tell your clients up front, so that they're properly informed, "Just so you know, there's absolutely no evidence that the magical energy I'm claiming to manipulate exists, or that what I'm going to do next works other than by placebo effect"?
The fact that chemotheapy is sometimes or even often continued past the point guidelines suggest it be curtailed does not argue that there's ever a point where energy healing has proven to be safe or effective.
At late stages of cancer chemotherapy is no longer recommended as palliative care, but too often it's continued anyway. That is a problem that needs to be addressed.
But it doesn't mean that at any stage energy healing is either safe or effective, or should be recommended for palliative care.
I have been looking more closely at the article Judith referred to, and I think I detect some serious bias from the journalist who wrote it. For example she wrote:
This cannot possibly be true as the graph further down the page shows that only 9% of patients receive chemotherapy in the last month of their lives.
That is not supported by what the experts in the article actually say. Palliative chemotherapy is not only given at the very end of life as the author seems to imply. Some of the other conclusions she comes to seem similarly unsupported by the evidence she presents.
On the subject of the efficacy of palliative chemotherapy, this article from JAMA (PDF), 'The Role of Chemotherapy at the End of Life “When Is Enough, Enough?”' is well worth reading for anyone interested in this subject. It states, with citations, that:
Compare this with what Judith wrote that I took exception to:
I don't think I need to add any more.
Its funny and sad that Marg and Judith are so fixated on badmouthing a competing treatment. They aren't thinking about potential consumers like me who want proof that their treatment works. They aren't arguing to help the sick, they're in here to try and increase their market penetration.
The way I see it, they're trying to win brand loyalty through (dishonest) negative ad campaigns while we're demanding they present the positive aspects of their brand before we buy. It never occurs to them that some of us see no point in remaining loyal to any brand: We use what works best, and we're used to seeing identity politics being used as a surrogate for performance. We want to buy treatments that work a la carte. We do not want to buy package deals based in corporate ideological culture.
Judith,
Unfortunately that's not true.
Leaving aside the fact that little of this is true, where have I or anyone else advocated giving cancer patients in the very final stage chemotherapy? I have stated that I think doctors should stick to the guidelines, such as the NCCN guidelines I referred to earlier which state that:
That seems like a good approach to me.
Judith:
I am doubtful of your experience with cancer patients at the end of life, if you think reiki makes much of a difference to them. I watched my grandfather approach death a while back, of cancer. He would've had any reiki practitioner thrown out of his house, even though he'd consciously rejected chemo. (Not because he doesn't believe in it. Because he was in his 90s, in failing health, and honestly didn't think there was any point. He was a general surgeon with an exceptionally pragmatic approach to life.) What did he select at the end of life? Hospice, liquid morphine, highballs, and Dos Equis. And, of course, plenty of conversation with the people he'd known and loved through his life.
I respect the decisions made by people at the end of life. I do not respect people attempting to make a buck by offering to handwave over them with the implication that this will do something beneficial, especially if it delays them at all from doing the things that will actually get them what they want -- effective pain relief, especially.
I think Judith has little concept of the range of responses that exist with most forms of therapy, or why single anecdotes can never form the basis for consistent management of any disease.
@Krebiozen
You are still confusing chemotherapy that is intended to extend life with palliative chemotherapy that is intended to make the process of dying more comfortable.
This is you suggesting the use of chemotherapy to make the process of dying more comfortable. That would be you advocating giving final stage cancer patients chemotherapy.
@Calli Arkale
1) We have done it for free.
2) We have seen significant pain relief.
You are speaking out of ignorance.
why all this talk now of relieving cancer pain when earlier it was curing cancer (and gangrene, diabeetus...) via waving hands?
You have a talent for understatement, dyson. I think those things are rooted in the inability to think in terms of populations, rather than ideals, as well as a lack of self-awareness of their humanity and what that means.
Judith:
1. Price and efficacy are not related.
2. Are you talking of your anecdotes, biased by your natural human cognition shortcomings that everyone has? Or are you talking about a study of energy medicine versus sham energy medicine as placebo?
Judith, how have you excluded the possibility that you're observing a placebo effect, and that the magical hand waving/forming mystical symbols integral to reiki, 'performed for free' or otherwise, is the proximate cause of the significant pain relief you observe?
Your claim, after all, is that you're channeling energy which relieves pain--surely you can other some credible reason to believe you are in fact channeling energy and that energy is in fact causing the observed pain relief.
Judith,
That would be you demonstrating, not for the first time, that you seem to have a serious problem with English comprehension. The word "dying" has shades of meaning. Palliative chemotherapy is given to patients with terminal cancer, who are by definition dying. The process of dying may take months or even years, and chemotherapy given during that period is palliative chemotherapy, which is intended to make the process of dying more comfortable, as I put it earlier. It is very effective for that purpose, as you can see from the JAMA article I cited and quoted from above. The final stages of cancer are the final weeks or days, a time when chemotherapy is probably not useful as I also stated above.
@Krebiozen
Bit by bit, we are dying all the time. It's not dying that palliative chemotherapy is meant make more comfortable but the decline leading up to it. I do know what effect "palliative chemotherapy" had on our second pancreatic cancer patient -- I was later told he wished he had never tried it, and in hindsight he thought it would have been better if he had continued his treatment with us.
This is what is known as an anecdote. What Krebiozen presented is data.
Why should we weight the experience of a single individual more than results from a cohort of many individuals?
Which would you rather drive: a car that was driven by one person, who thought it seemed safe, or a car driven by hundreds of individuals, the majority of which thought it seemed safe?
And another anecdote. Judith once again refuses to acknowledge her humanity.
Judith,
No you don't. What you know is:
I refer you back to the Gonzalez study comparing chemotherapy for pancreatic cancer with no treatment (actually enzymes, juices and coffee enemas) cited somewhere above, which found:
I'm told it is quite common for cancer patients to attribute the effects of their cancer to their treatment. Based on the evidence, I suggest that what your second pancreatic cancer patient experienced was largely "the morbidity of progressive pancreatic cancer", and he would probably have been considerably worse off in terms of survival and quality of life if he had continued with your "treatment".
@Krebiozen
How long did Gonzalez' cancer patients in the study live?
Thinking about branching out into something more ghoulish?
OK, Judith, for a while there you were actually a bit of a relief compared to Marg, the contemptible purse-snatcher of science, but when you decided to tell people that 'clearly' they had 'NO experience' (your emphasis) with cancer patients at the ends of their lives, you crossed a line. It makes clear how self-centered and selfish you are. You view your personal experience as sufficient to hang an entire pseudoscience on, but if anyone else's personal experience does not match yours, you declare it not to exist. Do you even comprehend the arrogance that speaks of? No one else's experience can exist if it doesn't support the conclusions you've come to from your own experience??
Let's cut to the chase.
You keep trying to argue towards the conclusion "What we do is so much better than chemotherapy."
Nothing you have to say about chemotherapy is going to be of interest until you manage to support the premise that your offering actually produces measurable results. And by "support the premise," we mean supporting it with rigorously collected data, not with anecdotes and especially not with anecdotes that aren't even what happened but what someone thinks would have happened, e.g. "our second pancreatic patient thought he would have done better with energy healing than with chemo." If that's the closest you have to convincing evidence, then you have none. And all you're doing - besides grossly insulting the people who have seen end-stage cancer first-hand and didn't convert to Handwaveology, by telling them they don't exist - is wasting your time and ours.
Judith,
I did mention that somewhere in the mass of comments above, but I'm happy to quote from the paper itself:
Out of 23 patients on chemotherapy, 2 survived twice as long as the patient given energy healing who survived 20 months. About 25% of the treated and 5% of the untreated patients were still alive after 20 months.
Antaeus,
I agree. The only reason I'm engaging with the subject is that it mightily pisses me off to see chemotherapy misrepresented and portrayed as an ineffective bogeyman. Cancer patients are frightened quite enough without being told that the treatment their doctor recommends will do nothing but "torture them on the way out" and that they would be better off relying on pixie dust.
Thank you, everyone, for this interesting and informative discussion.
what, Judith - no comment on the data comparing Gonzales' "protocol" with chemo that Krebiozen provided just above?
I presume that "discussion" has novel semantics once one is wired into the Ancient Masters.
@Bronze Dog
It's kind of like how political parties work, trying to get voters from their base, but ignoring the swing votes and independents.
@Judith
AKA I'm not winning this argument and I don't have any data, so I think I'll duck out now...
There is a type of pancreatic cancer with very good 5-year survival rates, which is the one Steve Jobs had. He lived 8 years.
Apparently Gonzalez has now written a book denouncing the way the trials for his regimen were conducted, with particular emphasis on how patients were recruited for the trials. I haven't read the book, so I cannot comment.
Yet you just did comment, Judith, while not bothering to mention that Jobs had quite a bit of "conventional" treatment in living 8 years (not to mention Orac had several posts about how Jobs' flirtation with woo might have cost him additional time among us).
Not that you can be bothered collecting data, but count me among the semi-lurkers who both laughs at your complete inability to grasp science and who laments the possibility that anyone in need actually listens to you.
Judith,
That's true, but it's not the type of pancreatic cancer we have been discussing, and is not the type of cancer studied in the Gonzalez trial. We are talking about inoperable pancreatic exocrine adenocarcinomas, Jobs had an endocrine tumor, an insulinoma.
I have read quite a lot of Gonzalez's comments on this trial, which amount to nothing but special pleading, or as Orac put it, "disingenuous nonsense". It has also been discussed at great length at the science based medicine blog.
Even if Gonzalez was correct (he wasn't) and the trial was unfair (unethical? probably, a shambles? perhaps, unfair? I don't think so), it doesn't help your case at all. Several patients in both arms lived longer than the patients whose lives you claim were extended by energy treatment.
Veering even further off topic, but I think it's interesting to note the results Gonzalez was claiming for his regimen in pancreatic cancer patients before the clinical trial I have mentioned. Such as:
The results of this "2-year, unblinded, 1-treatment arm, 10-patient, pilot prospective case study"* were interesting enough to prompt the NCI to sponsor a trial. If energy treatment practitioners carry out a case study with results like this, perhaps the NCI might fund a further investigation. As I understand it the Domancic Method is supposed to work with conventional treatment, so there would be no ethical barriers to randomizing two groups of cancer patients: conventional treatment alone and conventional treatment plus energy treatment. I won't hold my breath.
*It now seems likely that this case study suffered from selection bias - you have to be in pretty good shape to endure 2 years of constantly juicing, drinking juices, cleaning the juicer, swallowing handfuls of supplements and somehow fitting in coffee enemas as well. It makes white water rafting look like a walk in the park.
That's one thing that strikes me about some alties. They've got a segment of pill poppers who seem to think they can get healthy without modifying their diet or exercising so long as they take the right metabolism boosting supplements or whatever they're advertising.
It certainly gets thrown in with all the radical diets and such, which sets up a bit of a conflict: If the diet's so healthy and natural, why do you need supplements on top of it? Naturally, I suspect the answer is, "To boost the guru's profits."
Thank you, Anteaus F for your comment above regarding Judith, especially this bit, copied, below:
"And all you’re doing – besides grossly insulting the people who have seen end-stage cancer first-hand and didn’t convert to Handwaveology, by telling them they don’t exist – is wasting your time and ours."
Exactly. There was something grotesque about Judith's proclamation: "...you have NO experience with cancer patients...". I was astonished at the arrogance and willful ignorance of her comment. (J.'s woo & pseudo-science crap was bad enough).
I'm impressed by the restraint and good manners of the medical people who contribute to this comment thread.
@THS
Anyone who has seen end-stage cancer patients and the ravages of both cancer and chemo, who does not want to see a better solution, has no heart.
anyone who thinks believes mindless handwaving is a better solution is not only heartless...
You still don't get it do you? Anyone who deludes themselves into thinking they have a better solution without any reliable evidence and with zero plausibility, has no brain. When you try to persuade patients to abandon the best hope they have it makes things even worse. There's no excuse for that in the 21st century.
We want a better solution, Judith. It's rather cynical of you to pretend we don't. Demonizing us or the pharmaceutical companies isn't going to accomplish anything outside of providing you with an excuse to feel superior.
The real problem we have with you is that you aren't willing to do what it takes to prove you have a better solution.
I actually don't believe Judith has seen people at end stage. I have and it is not pretty and if she thinks we are heartless enough not to want better then there is no reasoning with her AT ALL
And you no doubt are accusing others of being heartless money-grabbing poisoners because you have so big a heart?
Agashem,
I suspect she has, but has assumed that the unpleasant symptoms were all due to the chemotherapy and radiotherapy, and not the cancer. Orac wrote an interesting blog post on this a few years ago.BTW on the anecdotal front, I have seen a few friends and relatives at end stage - for example my father died of leukemia*, my uncle of stomach cancer. I have also seen more than a few children die of cancer. My son spent most of the first two years of his life in the same hospital I worked at. That meant I got to know a succession of parents and their sick children. As parents who have been in a similar situation know, you can get to know people surprisingly well in such circumstances, spending hours together in emotional torment, waiting while your child is in the OR etc. I was also often doing lab work on the same children, which was interesting but often heartbreaking, finding out bad (sometimes good) news before the parents and having to pretend I knew nothing. One child who sticks in my mind, a boy of about three years old, went through chemotherapy, losing all his hair, vomiting etc., to shrink a brain tumor sufficiently for surgery to remove it. I sat with his parents discussing the decision they faced - consent to the surgery which would probably blind him, as the surgeon would have to go though his visual cortex, but possibly save him, or rely on chemotherapy which meant he would almost certainly die. His parents opted for the surgery and bravely took their blind son home but he was back within weeks and rapidly deteriorated. I was there when he had his final cardiac arrest, saw the faces of the doctors after their unsuccessful attempts at resuscitation, and also saw his parents who were understandably devastated. You don't forget something like that.So I agree with Judith, "Anyone who has seen end-stage cancer patients and the ravages of both cancer and chemo, who does not want to see a better solution, has no heart". However, I have never encountered nor even heard of anyone who does not want a better solution.*He was a doctor and went for chemotherapy, not surprisingly.
Yikes, wall of text! Sorry about that. There are paragraphs in there but [p] tags clearly don't work how I thought. The latest version of my preview program needs a tweak.Test - this should be a separate paragraph.
Let's see if <br /> works.This should be a new graf.
Yah, so it's digested like any other WP-ignored tag. What'd you write the previewer in? It seems like you'll just have to output a CR or CR/LF.
Narad,
I think something has changed in the way Scienceblogs process html.
I'm sure [p] and [/p] worked yesterday, but today it strips them out and puts in its own instead of LF/CR, your <br /> was stripped out too. That or I'm more confused than I thought.
(Gets out stick... ...and...
...starts...poking.)
I used Visual Basic's inbuilt WebBrowser which is basically a version of IE, which I thought would process simple HTML tags the same. I'll have another play at getting it right.
@ Krebiozen,
That's a really tough story to read; Thanks for commenting.
Alain
The thing about finding better solutions:
Doctors and pharmaceutical companies are continuously researching new drugs and treatments. They experience failures, dump them, and move onto the next one that looks promising. They've made steady progress against a lot of cancers over the decades.
Energy medicine has been stuck in stasis, and it's an uphill battle to get any proponent to merely cite the source of their claims. More often, they whine that they should be given special treatment and offer transparent excuses instead of doing the work.
Last...
...tries at...
...tinkering......with the...
The problem you have is that there's no telling what the $allowed_tags are going to be. WP "thinks" in XHTML (which, if there is any justice in the world, will be obsoleted by HTML5), so you need to output a plain CR (the stylesheet will handle the LF) rather than a tag.
Hey guys, I wondered if it's possible to customize the $allowed_tags? if it's possible, you may be looking at an uphill battle.
Alain
All I have to do is arrange to have the previewer mimic what the WP does to the text, so the user can tinker with it until it looks right.[LF/CR]
I think I have it working about right now. [LF/CR LF/CR]
The single and double line breaks have me a little confused though.
Sure. Hell, it's possible to have the courtesy to tell people what they are in the first place. It's possible to implement a preview. It's possible to set the damn fool server clocks correctly rather than deleting the time stamps. I'm not holding my breath on competence in this quarter.
Using an html editor is new to me, but I find this one particularly helpful and easy for beginners (like me). http://www.w3schools.com/tags/tryit.asp?filename=tryhtml_basic
Heart, brain, whatever. There are self-appointed "healers" who do see end-stage cancer. That does not qualify them to insult the medical profession.
I’m not holding my breath on competence in this quarter.
neither do I :)
See ya later (after listening to Fast Five).
Alain
@THS
Pointing out that the medical profession does not do particularly well with end stage cancer is not an insult but a statement of fact. My, we are thin-skinned.
@Judith - your statement was
The clear implication is that you believe that someone fits this category. To whom do you refer?
In your follow up, you say "Pointing out that the medical profession does not do particularly well with end stage cancer is not an insult but a statement of fact." What are your criteria? Well compared to what? Is there someone who does better? Who? If not, how do you know it's possible to do better?
@Mephistopheles
No comparison needed. It does not do well, period.
FTFY
Of course a comparison is needed. People can only do as well as it is currently humanly possible to do. Claiming that people don't do a good job when there is no known way to do it better is merely being spiteful.
If there's a currently known better way, then point to it. If there's not, then encourage people to research it.
@Mephistopheles
No, that's an opinion.
So, wait, to declare the the medical profession doesn't do well with end stage cancer (whatever you mean by that) is merely a statement of fact, but a similar statement about energy healers (backed by a complete lack of data about the efficacy of energy healing) is opinion?
@judith
Apparently, since all you have posted is opinions (and apparently ones that can kill innocents), I can assume then that you are nothing more than a charlatan and a debased murderer, wiling to cheat innocents out of their money and time just for some voodoo treatment.
But please, keep posting along with marg your incompetent minion. The more you post here, the less time you have to prey on innocents and to spew your venomous lies to other vulnerable people.
I await your incompetent reply, just to see how much of the stupid your comment contains.
Spiteful is the right word. It's also cheap, transparent rhetoric once again intended to make Judith feel superior despite doing nothing. We go on an on about consumer protection by wanting clinical trials to test efficacy of all proposed medical treatments (or as close as we can ethically get to such trials) and Judith turns a deaf ear because such things are beneath her, and because it can't be compacted into a partisan slogan.
The only time she feigns concern about the patients is when she thinks it'll be an effective way to badmouth the lead competitors. It's like she's actively doing everything to convince us of her insincerity and heartlessness. She's a ruthless businesswoman at her core and can't understand why we don't see absolutely everything in terms of market share.
Judith has the secret files, man. The ones that are so amazing that nobody would dare publish a write-up. This wellbore into the Mysterium Tremendum pulsates with such amplitude (yet discreetly low frequency) that it would be completely unreasonable to suggest that she, you know, give it a whirl.
Judith seems to fall for the nirvana fallacy...
@Flip - I never cared much for Nirvana. I prefer Utopia.
Judith is wrong, of course. Untreated cancer is a terrible way to die. There are ways to alleviate pain and suffering, but Judith will have none of that. Unconscienable quackery.
A friend of mine told me this morning that he just just found out he has throat cancer. He's waiting for some results to find out exactly what type so he can get properly targeted treatment. I won't be suggesting energy healing, but I will offer to accompany him to his next appointment. A bit of friendly moral support is worth more than any hand waving I reckon.
I find your close-mindedness terribly sad.
Since we are sharing opinions, I think you are a walking text book example of confirmation bias, and a danger to yourself and others.
You're projecting, Judith. You're the closed-minded one. We're willing to change our mind if you provide good evidence that was obtained in ways that counteract human biases. Instead of trying to meet us on those terms, you spout anecdotes while in denial of your very humanity, thinking you have a godlike immunity to perceptual bias.
Here's a big question, Judith: What would it take to convince you you're wrong?
@judith
As predicted, a childish, stupid little answer form someone so small-minded like you.
But then again, what would we expect form a quack like you.
@Krebiozen
Exactly what I was thinking. They really do lack originality, don't they?
And yet another post void of evidence that energy healing does anything at all.
Judith, you're the one who has said there's no point in doing research because it wouldn't get published, WITHOUT EVEN TRYING.
Others have repeatedly asked you and Marg to come up with the sources OR do your own research, so they're not stonewalling you quite like you insist.
You're the one who raises objections and accuses the medical establishment, but changes the subject when presented with a scientific explanation/refutation.
You're the one who makes broad generalised statemets about how bad "allopathic" medicine is, but either 1) don't acknowleedge the contrary evidence when presented, 2) change the subject, OR 3) attack the messenger with vague ad hominems.
You even agreed you have a bias when called out on it. Others have agreed they have biases too, which is precicely why they're calling for valid evidence for your statements about energy healing before believing it. You haven't provided any such evidence. Others are dealing with their biases in their research. You aren't.
One side is constantly doing research, keeping score (of both hits AND misses, so to speak) and experimenting to find new or improved treatments. The other side (as you're so fond of black-and-white thinking) doesn't.
You don't even bother apologising for you ad hominem statemets when shown to be erroneous.
Which side sounds more close minded?
A perfect description of Judith and Marge, who don't want to do *anything* to find a better solution, don't want anyone else to find a better solution, and just want to scoop up the bucks with their handwaving while their victims suffer and die horribly.
@LW
You just described, perfectly, what the pharmaceutical companies are doing.
Uhuh. If you were the opposite then, you would be sharing your better solution with the world by posting evidence and not anecdotes. Oh wait, that's what Big Pharma have been doing and you haven't been doing it... so LW is right.
If you have the better solution, nothing would make Big Pharma cringe more than you lording it over them by submitting yourself and your 'data' for everyone to see.
I won't hold my breath.
Then why have they been finding better solutions all this time? Why have cancer survival times gone up in general with new treatments? Why are pharmaceutical companies spending money researching these new treatments?
Once again, you're projecting, Judith.
No, I have not. Pharmaceutical companies, for all their faults, have over a period of decades improved their products. There is a good reason why one of my best friends survived lymphoma, and it wasn't because of charlatans like you.
Also, as has been pointed out repeatedly on this thread, tu quoque is not a valid argument. If Big Pharma doesn't care whether its patients suffer and die in agony, that does not change or excuse the fact that *you* don't care if your victims suffer and die in agony.
Judith, why do you intentionally go out of your way to use arguments we've said won't work? If anyone's stonewalling, it's you. You're self-censoring by choosing the least effective arguments.
That's possibly the dumbest thing that either of you have said here, and it has stiff competition. Drug company executives, like the rest of us, have relatives and friends with cancer and are just as likely to get cancer themselves, so of course they want to find a better solution. Also, when drug companies find safer and more effective treatments for any type of cancer they make billions, which is why they invest billions of dollars every year in cancer research, along with governments and charities.
As just one of many examples of this, picked more or less at random, look at rituximab, a drug produced by IDEC Pharmaceuticals and approved by the FDA in 1997. It's used to treat to treat chemotherapy-resistant B-cell non-Hodgkin lymphomas and is a monoclonal antibody against a protein called CD20 found on the surface of B cells. It was developed in mice but has been cleverly genetically engineered to have human characteristics (i.e.it is chimeral) to reduce the immune reactions injecting a foreign protein normally provokes. It's an effective drug which has spurred the development of other chimeral monoclonal antibodies and made IDEC $3 billion last year alone.
You might also look at other targeted drugs like trastuzumab (Herceptin), gefitinib (Iressa), panitumumab (Vectibix) and cetuximab (Erbitux) all of which are significantly effective and make at least half a billion dollars a year for their developers.
As others have pointed out, the inaccuracy of your statements is easily proven by looking at the increase in survival we have seen over the past few decades. For example, picking a cancer that isn't picked up by improved screening, here's a graph of 5-year-survival of leukemia in those under 20. From 40% 5-year-survival in 1975 to better than 80% today, and all of it due to better treatment, mostly chemotherapy. None of that improvement is due to any kind of alternative treatments, certainly not energy healing.
Another way to summarize Judith and Marg's style:
They think this is a zero-sum, two-party election, so they run a negative campaign against the biggest competitor, stupidly thinking people will vote for energy medicine solely as a means of voting against pharmaceuticals.
The first problem is that they doesn't realize that even if we believed the mudslinging, we would more likely opt to stay home or to vote for a third party. Negative ad campaigns tend to lower voter turnout for this reason. Some of us recognize our candidate as flawed but see positives that outweigh all the real negatives. The addition of lies in a negative campaign also acts as a giant red flag that the mudslinger has nothing in his favor. Hypocritical attacks make it even worse for the mudslinger.
The other problem is that this isn't an either/or election. We can vote for any number of people, and there are several seats available. If we were convinced of energy medicine's effectiveness, we could use both pharmaceuticals and energy medicine.
Because Judith and Marg don't understand our utilitarian perspective and trapped themselves in a closed-minded partisan perspective, they don't realize that they're effectively arguing for non-voting, rather than voting for energy medicine. They're more interested in hurting the "competition" than they are in presenting someone worthy of holding office.
Ooh, somebody's biofield seems to have taken on a greenish tinge. Maybe one of your partners in pseudoo at "Toronto Bioenergy Associates" could adjust that for you, Judith. (Then again, maybe not, as only you seem to merit testimonials on the Web site.) Indeed, as time is short, perhaps it would be appropriate to wind up by assisting you in this effort to manifest The Sort Of Advertising That You Just Can't Buy with, say, a slogan.
How about "Puting the Zero Back in Zero-Point!™"? "When It Comes to Mesmerism, We Don't 'Mes' Around!™"?
I've often wondered if newage types like Marg and Judith have ever *met* anyone who works in real health care. Somehow their descriptions of doctors and the entire pharmaceutical industry remind me of the scene in Woody Allen's Love and Death when the Russians are discussing whether Russian Jews have horns like German Jews.
I *have* met a lot of doctors, and just among the ones I've known, two died of cancer, two lost their wives to cancer, one lost his mother and a cousin to cancer.
If, as the newage types claim, oncologists know The Cure For Cancer, or don't know and are just pretending to research with no intention of ever finding a cure, or of admitting it if they do find a cure -- well, all I can say is they'd better hope their fellow doctors never find out.
Of course, any oncologist who knew The Cure, and broke ranks to tell the world, would be immediately world famous and incredibly rich, whereas if he kept quiet he'd be just another doctor paying off his student loans. I guess oncologists don't study game theory.
Funny how Marg and Judith don't want to tell the world their "cure" -- or at least don't want to prove it to the world.
I hope I'm not commenting too much, but the recent sneering by Judith has really offended me.
That's an awesomely stupid thing to say on a blog run by a surgeon/ scientist specializing in breast cancer. You think he hasn't seen cancer patients at the end of life? Oncologists *don't* just tell patients to go home and die, and just wash their hands of the matter, Marg and Judith's fantasies to the contrary not withstanding. Oncologists remain involved to at least provide palliation if they can.
And furthermore some of us laymen have experience with cancer patients too. Like *me* for instance. I was in the room when my stepmother died. I was the last person my grandmother responded to the day before she died (I wasn't in the room when she died because her children didn't feel the grandchildren needed to see that). And both of them had extremely bad prognoses but survived for years (six and ten respectively) thanks to modern medicine.
And then Judith comes in here sneering about how much better and more knowledgeable and more caring she is than people who have devoted their lives to saving others from the ravages of cancer and other diseases. What a horrible person.
Well no - then they'd also have to share profits and stop being special little snowflakes. As Pixar put it: when everyone is special, no one is.
I'm not sure what high church scepticism orders for the dead and dying, but this thread shall soon breathe its last...
gentlemen, make your statements or give last rites or do whatever is apropo...
Totally off topic but this new blog set up is driving me up the wall.
I liked to comment and, due to my working hours did it on my mobile (cellphone for the Septics).
It's now near on impossible to scroll down and actually loading this site takes longer than to convince Ms McCarthy that she may be misinformed.
@LW
You do realize that that comment was not meant for Orac but for someone who I thought was suggesting chemotherapy to make dying cancer patients feel better? We sorted it out, as it turned out that he did not mean cancer patients who were actually at the very end stage of their disease but cancer patients in earlier stages.
I realize there is a lot to read here, but I do wish people would read back a little before it before they jump to comment on something.
omit "before it"
Your insult was addressed to Krebiozen, one of the regulars here who has real medical knowledge which you do not. Whether or not Krebiozen meant "cancer patients in earlier stages" is irrelevant to your completely unwarranted insult. You have no way of knowing whether Krebiozen or anyone else on this thread has experience with cancer patients at the end stage, but you feel free to flaunt your ignorance and insult people like Krebiozen, Orac, and medical personnel in general.
And yes, I have read this whole thread, and every time I look at your comments I loathe you more.
@Denice Walter
In any good brawl or argument you eventually realize that the epithets the other party is throwing at you apply equally to them.
@LW
And you are just plain rude.
Thanks for that revealing look into your psyche, Judith. In your mind, an argument that devolves into "I know you are but what am I?" is a good argument? Explains a lot about you.
In the meantime, present us with rigorously collected data that demonstrates the safety and effectiveness you keep claiming for energy medicine. Oh, what's that? You don't collect data in any sort of a rigorous fashion? You in fact refuse to do so? Then you have no grounds on which to criticize those who actually do that hard work which you won't do because it might ruin your fantasies.
@judith
And you are a certified snake-oil scammer, willing to cheat and kill innocents for money.
And please, relying on childish insults? You really have to get out more, judith, your insults are pathetic beyond belief.
But keep posting, the more you post here, the less time you have to scam innocents of their time and money.
I'm saddened that Judith thinks I'm plain rude. I was going for "deeply offended and quite contemptuous". Perhaps there's an emoticon I should have used.
But I'll just agree with novalox.
Beats a mind-numbingly stupid, recycled fraud any day.
@LW
Thanks for the compliment.
And I really do mean for judith and her incompetent minion marg to keep posting here. At the very least, these two scientific illiterates provide some entertainment value with there inane postings.
More importantly, it keeps them away from posting their dangerous superstitions to other individuals who are vulnerable and may not know the fraud that these two hucksters are putting on them.
I'd rather that the rats judith and marg post here where the posters can dismantle their flawed arguments rather than another forum that they can push their fraud onto others. Limits the damage they can do.
Wait, Judith, are you saying that everyone who criticizes anything is a hypocrite? It sounds like a convenient (and misanthropic) psychological defense mechanism that prevents a person like you from being open-minded about criticism. In the real world, some people criticize bad behaviors and refuse to tolerate such behavior in themselves. Some people actually have principles, not that you'd know anything about that.
Ever considered growing up? Ever considered taking responsibility for your actions and how they continually reinforce the bad image we have of you?
My parting gift to you all, since this thread is probably about to shut down.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HJ5eajLCz
Shame on you all for this little exercise in trying to shut down dissent and innovative thinking.
Judith, wrong again. Certainly not innovative thinking. Nothing new and no particular thinking in J.'s fanciful nonsense and egregious insults.
And I do hope "parting gift" is a final flounce.
Holy f*ck. Seventeen hundred comments is "shutting down dissent"? Warmed-over Theosophy is "innovative thinking"? Again, perhaps you should look into the correct frequency to hum away asshurt. The Ancient Masters must have this filed away somewhere.
Entirely appropriate to depart on the equivalent of a 404, though. Did you make up that hash yourself, or did it mysteriously fall from the ceiling in an envelope, Koot Hoomi–style?
@judith
Thanks for the evidence of your complete idiocy and stupidity.
Please keep posting, entertaining idiots like you and your minion marg don't come by often, and we all do need a laugh from someone so incompetent like you.
@Peebs
It could just be this thread. With almost 2k comments, it takes my speedy computer several minutes to load properly.
@Judith
Oh wah - poor little baby is forced to have her freedom of speech trampled on. Because it's not like you don't have your own site where you can babble to your heart's content. Or a million other avenues for speech.
@Judith
You are still allowed to comment here, while sceptics often are not allowed to comment on sites, which are in favor of all kinds of quackery.
b.t.w. Will we reach the 2,000 mark, before this is closed?
There is nothing innovative in saying "Hey, I have this fantasy where I'm an ultra-special miracle worker who knows The Truth and can heal people with my Sooper Sekrit Knowledge! You should believe it despite my failure to provide or even collect evidence!"
Shame on you for inventing a "shut down the dissent" boogeyman rather than face the fact that you came peddling bull**** and everyone recognized it as such. If it's not bull**** then show us the rigorously collected data which demonstrates it to be more than a figment of your wishful thinking - OH WAIT, that's right, you already admitted that YOU DON'T COLLECT DATA. That's why no one's buying the hooey you want to sell, not because you're oppressed.
It looks like some cancer patients will soon have to rely on handwaving ...
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2235183/Cancer-treatment-crisis…
@Marg - yes, so rather than work to get more companies involved (perhaps generics) to fill the gaps providing a treatment THAT IS PROVEN TO WORK - you hope that people will have to rely on "hand-waving?"
You're funny....and not in a "ha-ha" way either.
@Lawrence
I'm sure cancer patients are not finding it funny either that big pharma is cutting back on making these drugs because they are not profitable. But who knows, they might find out that they do better with handwaving.
@Marg - any proof of that? Oh yeah, we've been asking for proof for about 1800 posts now, and you have offered nothing......
@Lawrence
Or I should say, maybe they will have to rely on handwaving as their drugs become unavailable and new drugs that replace them will probably be prohibitively expensive.
Big Pharma has to keep generating money to pay all those multibillion dollar fines.
Judith lies about who's shutting down discussion: Judith and Marg are. They are actively censoring themselves by refusing to cite good evidence in favor of energy healing. They're drowning out the most important talking point by constantly whining about pharmaceutical companies being imperfect, by citing anecdotes in a manner that denies their human capacity for self-deception, and by framing everything in their closed-minded, intolerant black-and-white perspective. They aren't even listening to our ideas, just knee-jerking at buzzwords. They don't want the conversation to move forward, they just want a forum for their bigotry.
They aren't serious about discussing this matter. They're patting themselves on the back for emulating their echo chambers.
Thought: Maybe Marg and Judith aren't really energy healers. Maybe they're just a couple trolls who simply hate pharmaceuticals and only pretend to be energy healers in order to make it look like they have a stake in medicine. Because surely, a real energy healer would have good scientific evidence for its utility right on hand and bookmarked for just such an occasion. I'd expect a fake energy healer to be evasive when we point out that we have no basis for trusting their claims of expertise.
Sorry, couldn't keep a straight face. XD
Energy healers are pretty much like psychics. They probably also lack any sort of method for telling the real ones apart from the fake ones, which leads one to wonder how a psychic can know they're really psychic instead of fooling themselves.
@Bronze Dog
Above I provided multiple links. You all dismissed them. Only the pharmaceutical companies get a free pass.
Marg, what were the reasons given for the dismissals? Would you like to specify a particular link you provided?
Oh, and newspaper articles aren't scientific, if you're referring to that Daily Mail link. Newspapers are notorious for misrepresenting science in the name of sensationalism and "balance" at the cost of fairness and accuracy.
No, I provided links to studies.
Dare you to watch this to the end:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Efa6PDkw6UU
Have you considered the possibility that what's coming out of your hands is actually your neurons desperately attempting to flee?
So, name one study you cited, and block quote the reason given by the people here for dismissing it.
I don't like to click YouTube links without at least a general idea what kind of video it links to.
I'll tell you what it is - it's 50 minutes of the same thing Marge has been posting here. Testimonies and claims of scientific validation, but not actually showing any actual science.
I admit I didn't watch the whole thing, but I did take about 10 good 1 minute samples out of it, and that's what I saw.
However, I may have missed the good bits, so I'll ask -
Marge, please tell me where to find what you think is the most important part of the video you linked to.
@Johnny
The scientists who speak about their findings? The doctors who say that their patients have been helped? The patients and caregivers who speak about their results waving their medical records?
50 minute video. Yeah, that'd leave me wondering about how much is padding or Gish Galloping. If I was using such a long video to make a point, I'd probably add a link to a transcript, since that'd make it easier to critique, either on a point-by-point basis or to pick out points of emphasis. Failing a transcript, I'd at least give timestamps for the most relevant points. Netiquette matters.
This isn't a Tupperware party or any other sort of MLM "event," Marg. In return, I double-dog-dare you to attempt to present the Lagrangian of your "system."
Anecdotes don't have scientific safeguards against human cognitive failings. Anecdotes are generally only useful for generating new hypotheses, not for confirming them. Even if we're talking medical records of individuals, that moves it up to case studies, but that won't let us know if their apparent results are typical for the treatment, if other factors might have been involved, or if they were cherry-picked after the fact.
So, on the first point of scientists showing their findings, how were those findings acquired? What was their methodology?
Please point us to where these findings have been published in a peer-reviewed journal. No proper scientist would speak about 'findings' that weren't published or in prep, right?
Again, show us the published clinical results.
All anecdotes. I think you're the only one doing any 'waving' around here.
The truth is that the lot of you are so uncomfortable with the notion of something you don't understand that nothing will change your minds.
I believe that the trailer will suffice. Slovenian hand gestures now will cure gangrene in but four days.
@Narad
You are waving around your prejudices and closed mind like a flag.
I remember watching some of that video when it was posted in the "reiki for animals" thread. Within the first minute the healer claims he can "cure" cancer and AIDS in three to four days. I switched right over to the Sci-Fi channel for some fantasy fiction done well.
Hunnybunny, I think the truth is that you are uncomfortable with the fact that not only are you understood very, very well, you're not even particularly novel.
The truth is that the lot of you are so uncomfortable with the notion of something you don’t understand that nothing will change your minds.
The truth is you are so uncomfortable with the idea that you could be wrong that you believe in magical curing powers with no evidence to support it.
I'm perfectly aware that there are thing's I don't understand. I'm happy to be wrong, it means I learn. These are the first things you learn when you embark on a career in science. I suspect you don't know many scientists...our thought process is not like yours. Every day things that I believe to be true are challenged by actual evidence, and I adapt my models to fit this evidence. If you had presented any actual evidence for your model, I would certainly change my mind.
The problem is, you assume that our minds work like yours. That our minds are committed to a truth despite evidence to the contrary. It's pure projection.
@Narad
More evidence of your fear?
@ Marg,
Judith did not answer my question. Would you answer it please: Do you have any evidence that reiki can relieve depression?
Alain
I think that's the video of which Orac wrote:
You are waving around your prejudices and closed mind like a flag.
I have asked you repeatedly for the teleology of the hands, Marg, and you have never failed to... well, fail. I assure you that if I'm going to be waving something in your general direction, it's not going to be a flag.
Where's the Lagrangian, Pancakes?
I've only been browsing these comments but did either Marge or Judith ever answer when asked point blank if there was any evidence or anything that would ever change their minds?
@Narad
With the Broddingnagians, natch, Snuggles.
"Brobdingnagians"
Hell of a word to type.
So, we point out the inherent flaws in testimonials, how they can lead to self-deception, and thus why they aren't acceptable as scientific evidence. Then Marg goes back to the panicked knee-jerk response of calling us closed-minded because we dared to point out the mere possibility of an alternative explanation for the results.
The accusation of us being uncomfortable is quite amusing because quite frankly, testimonials for quackery are well within our range of expectation because we know that humans are varied, there are a lot of humans, and thus some are going to have lucky beneficial outcomes despite ineffective treatment that are then favored by selection bias when quacks fish for testimonials. Confirmation bias is also common. These good outcomes are only unexpected if you assume humans and cases of illness are homogenous. We do not subscribe to those assumptions. We're population thinkers, and statistical outliers aren't extraordinary, and they aren't proof of anything when isolated from the larger context.
Marg, it's the unexpected that's supposed to be uncomfortable, not the mundane. But then again, like Judith, you seem uncomfortable with the very idea of your mundane humanity.
Ultimately, i think this is what it boils down to. The 2 ideas 'I can heal people with mystical energy, and have accepted money for this service' and 'there is no such thing as mystical healing energy, and no study has even shown that mystical energy can heal people' are incompatible. But because Marg's self-worth is so intimately tied to the second idea, her own cognitive dissonance prevents her from seeing the bigger picture and drawing rational conclusions.
What i don't understand is why Marg feels her thought process is any different from the other denialists featured on this site...chelation therapists, acupuncturists, AIDS / germ theory denialists, antivaxxers all engage in exactly the same tactics and thought processes as Marg. Does she believe in all these too? After all, if she's willing to accept anecdotes as evidence for energy healing, why not for 'vaccine injury' too?
Do you believe vaccines cause autism, Marg? If not, how can you discount the anecdotes of the parents who claim vaccines injured their children?
...that should read "intimately tied to the first idea"
There's no point in being an HIV denialist if you suspect there might be a buck to be leeched off the gig.
Marg,
I'm saddened to see that you've so completely misunderstood what's happened here.
I, for one, would be perfectly happy to be shown that by wishing manipulating energy fields with my mind and hands alone I could improve health, cure disease, turn water into Scotch, or what have you. So far the evidence I've been shown boils down to:
- failed experiments (results indistinguishable from no action)
- possibly interesting single cases of recovery that are well within the normal range of the progression of disease
- testimonials, anecdotes, and other takes not backed by good solid data.
As you no doubt know, it's quite easy to find patterns in randomness. Gamblers have winning streaks which they often attribute to skill or some lucky charm. Sports fans act as though, somehow, what they wear on game day can affect the team's performance. People see faces in clouds, mountains, pancakes, toast, and patterns of lichen that they attribute to spirits. deities, or demons. That's why science relies on techniques as statistics, repeatable controlled experiments, and calculation.
Yes, it's hard to do the work needed to get real evidence that something works. You can't just say "I willed the coin to come up heads 10 times in a row and it did - that's so mindbogglingly unlikely to have happened by accident that there must be a connection." You need to be able to show that chance alone did not cause the results you're seeing - and that you're not using a trick coin.
So, Marg, Judith, whoever - get some real data. Do it with suitable controls. Come up with just one thing that you can show repeatably that energy healing will cure better than placebo energy healing. Do it so that you can show that the people involved didn't just imagine it and treat noise as signal.
Please.
Thank you for reading this message.
Quote MO'B
Please.
Dream on...Hell's gonna freeze over before they consider the scientific method.
Alain
Marg, my mind is ready and willing to be changed--I'd love to be convinced that there's a cheap, non-invasive, cure for cancer that's without side effects. The problem isn't that we have minds incapable of change but that you've offered nothing in the way of evidence indicating a need they be changed.
You want to change our minds? Provide actual evidence that energy healing does heal people. That's hardly asking for much, if energy healing really does work as you claim.
Actually, AdamG, I was mostly talking about their mundane humanity in the sense of viewing themselves as error-prone. Humans are subject to confirmation bias, post hoc fallacies, faulty memories, motivated thinking, regressive fallacies, tribalism, and so on and so on and so on. Scientific methodology is necessary because we know that we're subject to those problems. We acknowledge our human limitations, which is why we demand the scientific approach.
Marg and Judith, however, don't see themselves as mere humans. They see themselves as godlike beings who only see things as they are because they're inherently objective and infallible as well as possessing a supernatural sense of causation, able to pick out the real cause of a change from the many, many possible factors, both known and unknown. They think they can see a handful of cherry-picked cases and draw conclusions from them because they don't acknowledge their humanity.
Dear Marg,
Since you view me as a closed-minded scientist, I'll provide that piece of evidence for you: I have tried reiki not too long ago and the reiki practicioner tested me to see if I had an open mind before going further (which I had).
Now as an exercise (exercice? I'm a French speaking guy), I'd like you to tell me if reiki relieve depression. Okay? In the mean time, I'll go wash the dish while enjoying two IPA classic from the Simple Malt brewery or even better, you tell me how much time do you need to answer my question and I'll patiently wait for you :)
In exchange, I'll give you my conclusion on the reiki session.
Deal?
Alain
Watching even the first few minutes of this video makes me feel like a witness to attempted manslaughter.
One of the comments on this YouTube video is as follows. It is the typical excuse (blame) given to patients.
When the energy and other treatments don't work, the patient is faulted for their holding on to their bad energy. Apparently, one patient's bad energy can trump the doctor's and universe's good energy.
@Alain, my understanding is that the practitioner is asking your energetic being for permission to enter your energy field, prior to their beginning the session. This is the similar to the NAET and other energy treatments. It is not the same as their testing you to see if you have an open mind.
The patient is prepped with a statement explaining that even if the patient perceives that their mind is open to the treatments, their energy and karma may not be ready to receive the healing. This way, when the treatments inevitably fail, the Healer can blame the patient for the failure, instead of the treatment.
@ S,
What about spirit eating energy out of me?
Alain
p.s. you can guess where the reiki session went.
Of course Judith/Marg isn't going to provide any real evidence of her "healing" abilities. Why would she bother when she can continue scamming patients just fine without any evidence?
In the absence of a conscience or successful lawsuit, there's absolutely nothing stopping her murderous fraud.
Remind me again, which specific business is Marg/Judith affiliated with? Is it BioEnergy com or Toronto BioEnergy Associates or...?
The big problem is that they don't know what constitutes good evidence, otherwise they'd stop trying to pass testimonials off as such.
Hmmm. I think they actually *do* know what constitutes good evidence. They just don't give a damn.
Why voluntarily subject your woo-business to needless and bothersome restrictions? It's so much easier and financially beneficial to just market your crap directly to your target audience.
I'll bet Marg/Judith actively promote their woo via online patient support groups.
I'm sliding between the idea that they're Ayn Randian cronies who want to undermine consumer protection measures for the sake of profit, or they've been indoctrinated into spouting those sorts of memes reflexively.
@alain
Straight to the first/base Chakra?
From what I've seen from their type on the breast cancer support forum I visit, I think unfettered profit is absolutely their motive. If it were simply an indoctrination reflex, then surely (?!) they'd show signs of "coming around," given that they're often apparently relatively intelligent people.
I think of it as the Judge Judy test. Is it more likely that they're intelligent and reasonable people who legitimately believe in magic despite all evidence to the contrary, or that they're simply con artists out to make a buck? Ayn Rand, indeed.
thenewme,
I think the former is more likely, but then again I have been accused of having an unrealistically optimistic view of human nature. I like to look at Benjamin Rush who was convinced, from his own personal experience, that bloodletting was beneficial, even though we now know that it actually weakened and killed his patients. I think that confirmation bias, and a belief that all the unpleasant symptoms they have observed in cancer patients are caused by the treatment, not the cancer, is enough to explain where Marg and Judith are coming from.
If an intelligent man like Rush could believe an actively damaging treatment was doing his patients good, I think it is entirely possible for energy healers (homeopaths et al.) to believe they are curing patients when the truth is they are at best offering a few minutes of human companionship and attention.
That said, I do still find it weird that in the 21st century we still have literate people in the developed world insisting that magic is real.
Many "psychics" really don't know. Randi mentioned in one of his books that many people who tried to win his prize were not charlatans but genuinely believed they could do it. It was quite a crushing blow when they learned that they could not and had simply been fooling themselves.
I've refrained from the inclination to SEO the gig, but Judith is Toronto Bioenergy Associates. Marg appears to be a nobody of the first water, and I suspect that her fellow travelers share the sentiment.
Interestingly, i think we've got one of each here. I think Marg is True Believer, based on her staunch defenses of Bengston and willingness to at least discuss some specifics of the 'experiments' and 'evidence' behind energy healing earlier in the thread.
I think Judith, however, is a classic con artist. Notice how she doesn't even bother to respond to or defend claims that relaxation from reiki is not due to the actual energy, instead choosing to go on about the purported failings of chemotherapy instead.
It's a classic con artist maneuver: instead of trying to defend what you know is a lie, cast doubt on the opposing side. Poor Marg, however, has bought the story hook, line, and sinker, and spins around in circles of dissonance trying to avoid the truth.
@Krebiozen,
You've no doubt had a much broader exposure to it than I have, but I also think you give them more credit than they deserve. IMO, the willful ignorance in favor of financial gain is the key thing that separates "quacks" from misguided consumers.
My experience is from a cancer patient perspective and participation in several online patient forums over the past few years. In nearly every instance on those forums, it has turned out that they just *happen* to have a business selling supplements, treatments, therapies, or other woo-services. Seriously, on BCO for example, every cancer treatment quack I've encountered turns out to be a woo peddler of some sort.
Of course I'm not talking about patients or interested people who ask questions or investigate or even fall for woo and quackery. And I'm sure there must be a few woo believers who aren't financially vested, but here I'm only referring to the really loud, persistent, arrogant, and EVIL monsters like these we're discussing, who claim to have The Cure and market directly to the desperate and gullible.
I'd love to believe that your vision of human nature is closer to reality than mine. Maybe I'm hopelessly jaded.
@Narad, I dunno. Is this type of SEO necessarily a bad thing?
@AdamG, as I mentioned, I may be hopelessly jaded, but I'd wager that if we looked further, we'd find that Marg is indeed just as much of a con artist as Judith, with financial stakes involved.
You know, this all started with Bengston, who can heal mice of cancer -- the tumors disappear -- without seeing them or being within miles of them.
It seems to me that one ought to be able to set up a completely ethical clinical trial of this. That is, a busy oncology practice makes this proposal to its sadly terminal patients: we want to test whether Bengston can cure you by waving his hands and thinking happy thoughts, so, if you consent to this ... procedure ... we'll make an appointment for you next week. When you come in the waiting room, our receptionist will call Bengston and alert him to your presence without identifying you in any way, just that you're a patient and present. If your tumor has disappeared in one month -- complete remission -- we'll count that as success, otherwise failure. And we'll consider Bengston to have succeeded in this trial if over half the patients "treated" are successes. We'll have an agreed third party oncologist do the exam in one month, so there won't be a question of prejudice.
It seems to me that we have informed consent, privacy protection, no possible harm to the patient, and a clear endpoint not very susceptible to various forms of bias, placebo effects, or whatever, so lack of blinding doesn't seem like a big problem. We don't have a control group, but those don't work with Bengston anyway, and in this case success is extremely unlikely to occur by chance. Also, it would be difficult to cherry-pick patients to prejudice the trial either way. And such a trial would be very inexpensive, as such things go.
I wonder why Bengston and his ilk haven't proposed such a trial.
Straight to the first/base Chakra?
If that mean nowhere, yup.
Alain
I'm guessing the answer involves Geomagnetic Probes.
LW,
There are some interesting videos on YouTube of dowsing being subjected to a double blind test, for example here. When, inevitably, the dowsers fail, they are surprised but it doesn't dent their confidence in their abilities in the slightest.
Also,
Bengston claims that conventional treatment interferes with his energy healing treatment, so it is impossible to test his claims with a randomized trial ethically. You could have a self-selected group that was willing to reject conventional treatment, but that would introduce biases and would also be unethical.
Ah, the inevitable out. You must choose either handwaving or real medicine, but not both.
On the other hand, if the patient is near death, they're not getting any more conventional treatment, except of course the pain relief that alt-meddlers would deny, so Bengston should be able to heal them at that point. But he won't accept that challenge, of course.
Because it involves record-keeping? This is not purely in jest; Bengston also claims that the Ponderomotive Energization, while functioning with terrifying power against cancer, cannot be expected to and does not in fact cure warts, so the explanations for these distinctions are of interest.
True, failure wasn't always a crushing blow. But it was for some. I wonder if dowsers are particularly resilient since they have had so many successes (if you drill deep enough, you'll probably hit some kind of water, though it may not be potable).
@LW - If Bengston were to remain true to form, the treated patients and the control patients would become entangled, with equal results in both groups.
Note this is not necessarily the same entanglement one sees when playing Twister.
I would note that dowsing, in the form of pendulums, is also used as a diagnostic method in homeopathic practice. The results are about what one would expect.
@LW
Bengston would have to know who he is treating and have a photograph of the person. The scenario of the anonymous patient in the physician's waiting room would not work. Also, by the time the physician consented to such a scenario, the patient would have to have been riddled with chemo and radiation, and be more or less beyond help, and Bengston says his method doesn't work with patients who have received chemo or radiation.
Back to the drawing board.
Why? Seriously, what could possibly be the explanation for the Cosmic Healing Vibrator being mediated by photographic emulsion? The blind cannot Hum The Distance Electric?
Formerly known as the Bonanza Speed Shop
@LW
Not probably - certainly. The is an ironic saying in the oil patch that all "dry holes" are actually wet (because all the permeable formations were full of water).
@LW
I would be more impressed if he could turn his cloud busting energies to power generation. I did a quick calculation for a cumulus cloud at the top of thermal from a quarter section summer fallow field (a half mile by a half mile.
Assuming the thermal results from a cube of air the size of the field (approximately 800m a side = 512 10^6 m3) and the cloud forms at 10 C (Water vapor pressure = 1.20 kPa), the ideal gas law gives us 261000 kg mol of water (4700 tonnes). The heat of vaporization of water is about 44.5 MJ/kg mol. This means the Bengston is expending 11,600 GJ to vaporize the cloud. This equivalent to burning 430 tonnes of anthracite coal. If he can do this every 15 minutes his power output is 12.9 Gigawatts. Even allowing for 25% efficiency and much smaller clouds, he should give up on healing and get to work on solving AGW.
@narad
I wonder if a digital photograph would work?
I have seen William Lee Rand send a Reiki Treatment through his eyes via a DVD. I think there is no claim so preposterous that a Reiki Master hasn't made it.
And everything looks worse in black and white
And from William Lee Rand's website, this waiver (bolding mine).
Would Bengston's method work on an individual if Bengston only had a photo of his or her identical twin?
What's the ED vernacular for opiate overdoses? "Pulmonary indifference," or some such nod to thorough relaxation, as I recall.
What would happen if the photo was printed from a flipped negative? Would the healing energy go to the wrong side of the body? How recent does the photograph have to be?
new blog post (in French):
http://www.securivm.ca/2012/11/qui-veut-dun-autiste-au-travail.html
Alain
@Renate
Yes.
Because this evidently needs to be repeated ad naseum (thanks Antaeus)
@Judith
In other words it doesn't work without cold reading involved. Hmm, wonder if Emily Rosa would be relevant here... oh yes, you guys love to ignore her study, don't you?
@Marg
and
Someone's logic is in a knot: first it's "Big Pharma profits" and then it's "cancer treatments aren't profitable". Make up your mind.
Sheesh, it's a wonder anyone falls for the crap Marg spouts at all, a five year old could see through the holes in her arguments.
Which were resoundingly shown to be full of problems. Instead of providing rebuttals or better evidence, you resorted to logical fallacies. It's not our fault if we have higher standards for evidence than you do - your standard is apparently postmodernistic "I believe, therefore it is" crap. Also, pharma hasn't gotten a free pass, it's just you keep inventing strawmen whereas pretty much everyone has said something akin to "SBM isn't perfect, but it improves over time". If it's not black and white, you refuse to see it.
AKA anecdotes.
If you posted actual evidence I might be inclined to change my mind. If you posted lots of evidence I'd change my mind. But that doesn't fit your worldview, so you continue to ignore it and pretend we're the ones with issues. The only thing I'm uncomfortable with is the fact that you expect that we're supposed to just take your word for it. (Or: what MOB said) I'll remind you that I previously posted I'd tried qi gong, and it's only in looking for evidence that I changed my mind about it - ie, the lack of evidence (and effects) turned me away from it.
But my FSM, this has all been said a billionty times before on this thread. Why we expect it to be hammered home this time around is beyond me. You really need a universe-sized clue bat to the head, don't you?
I repeat:
You know @ Flip, neighter will answer my question because they have no clue why reiki didn't work on me.
Alain
Similarly, half of all cancer patients will live longer than predicted, and if you treat enough you will come across some that live a lot longer than predicted.
How can anyone be "riddled with chemo and radiation"? Anyway, it's not a physician who has to approve such a trial, it's an institutional review board, or in the UK an ethics committee. Leaving a terminal cancer patient untreated, or treated only with handwaving, is considered unethical and contravenes several articles of the Declaration of Helsinki. For example it is essential that, "the physician has good reason to believe that participation in the research study will not adversely affect the health of the patients who serve as research subjects". That's why the Gonzalez trial, as instructive as the results are, should never have been carried out.
I wonder if Narad is on to something. It is far too easy to prove that Bengston's treatment doesn't work for warts, but when he treats cancer patients who have had surgery but no chemotherapy or radiotherapy he can take the credit for the effects of the surgery, which is responsible for the great majority of the efficacy of cancer treatments of solid tumors. He can then point out that the (surgery-cured) patient had no chemotherapy or radiotherapy, so his treatment must have been responsible for any improvements. I'm sure that impresses the ignorant.