In 2007 I noticed that they were offering Therapeutic Touch to cancer patients. Our skeptics group wrote a letter to Suburban and, while we never got a response from the Hospital, we got a defensive letter from the nurse overseeing TT, citing a positive review of TT in a nursing journal.

I note with gratification that the nurse is no longer at Suburban and that TT is no longer mentioned in their publications, indicating that skeptical activism can produce, if not miracles, beneficial results

Well, if they provide support and don’t interfer with medical treatment and don’t upset other patients or create a spectacle, maybe an exception could be made.
On the other hand, the patients ARE in a hospital getting medical treatment.
And I wonder if a doctor would be allowed in an altmed hospital to prescribe conventional medicines?

“I slightly disagree.
If the pastor is providing emotional support there is no problem. But, if he comes as a “faith healer” I do see a problem. For the same reason, Reiki practitioners should be banned unless and untill they can demonstrate that what they do is plausible and works, otherwise the hospital is giving tacit support no matter what their policy statements say.”

Are you really suggesting that hospitals prohibit patients from exercising their religious beliefs? As long as the practice doesn’t interfere with the provision of healthcare, why should it matter if someone brings in their personal psychic/pastor/dowser/whatever? Really, it’s attitudes like that that feed into the fear of “OMG scary atheists want to ban our religion !!!!1!!!1″. People’s practices are their own business as long as it doesn’t affect others. To attempt to prevent someone from exercising his beliefs, no matter how wacky, is just as offensive as insisting all patients attend a daily prayer session.

I don’t engage in applying it or receiving it much, but value the approach and my training in it. I am so grateful that it is broadening out as I am grateful for the institution inb 1991 of NCCAM as the “Government’s lead agency for scientific research on the diverse medical and health care systems, practices, and products that are not generally considered part of conventional medicine.” I have actually learned of its existence and the category of energy healing from your blog.

I don’t want to join this debate at this time because I am embroiled in the debate on evolution. However, I feel that learning from you, as I have done, warrants the fair turnabout of offering you my learning in exchange. I hope you will visit my website and become familiar with my work with communicating regarding what I call a girasas, a higher kingdom of nature.

I feel you have been done a disservice in not allowing you (as well as other U.S. students) to hear about this theory of evolution (found in theosophy) long ago. The story goes that a Messenger was expected in the last quarter of the 20th Century that would bring further light on what we find in theosophy and it is possible that this view of evolution wasn’t taught because it wasn’t complete enough.

When I went to the University to train to become a psychologist, I encountered resistance to my learning what I was interested in learning and left school to work at the Headquarters of The Theosophical Society, where I encountered many fascinating lecturers on diverse subjects. I never accomplished my career goal of becoming a psychologist.

As long as ridicule and harsh denial of people’s intelligence and human rights is considered to be part of a scientific method, American students won’t receive the type of education (or medical treatment) that they are entitled to receive. You have a wonderful mind and apply rigorous criticism to data, engaging in subjecting your knowledge to continuous updating, while improving your application of what you know.

Other people in our population do not have the luxury of carrying their torch along with you. If it is possible that our experiences exist way beneath your own, then it is also possible for you to be adept at stepping down your knowledge so that we may participate at a level that is comfortable to us.

Sometimes when we submit ourselves to your expertise, we lose the sense that we are valuable members of society. But is is not the human beings who have devoted their lives to continued study and therapy. Instead, I believe it to be part of this process of evolution, whereby a higher “girasas” kingdom invades the human beings and in this process of having them live within us, we lose some of our own willingness to do things for ourselves. We submit to their positions within our lives and bodies.

I hope you do know that we cannot compare to you and there COULD have been quotes from the interview which you gave this journalist which could have made the article more valuable and would have reached US. I just doubt that they would have been abject criticism, but quotes that showed your patience and co-partnership with human needs and struggles exhibited by the very existence of NCCAM in recent years.

You have to continue on your path and we have little choice but to struggle along at our level, but I hope you might enjoy hearing that evolution could involve a higher kingdom entering into us and in that way, our knowledge of what that higher kingdom does would be very limited. I hope you visit my webpage or search with “girasas” online to hear this new theory.

Wishful thinking. I check hopefully at my exchange with Ullman with similar letdown.

…or not.

ah yes, and wooey it was…

I see JREF has been mentioned. lets put it this way, if the foundation had been enacted 150 years ago and someone came forth with an xray machine, it would undoubtedly pass the criteria for the claim of “I can see your bones with this machine.”

likewise, i always laugh at this “there are things science can’t know” bit, because it is the oldest/lamest trick in the book. you make a claim that is unfalsifiable and then furrow your brow disapprovingly when we ask then how *you* in fact are so certain that it exists. then, when you stumble through your feeble logic, we immediately address it (perceived of course as a close minded attack) and you revert back to your argument from ignorance or say that “our methods” can’t get to it.

everything else has already been addressed. you might try to open your own mind and acknowledge that maybe, just maybe, magic doesn’t exist and you have been had. magic has never been demonstrated, charlatans certainly have.

contact Linda Rosa RN via the ISM website:

http://www.scienceinmedicine.org/contact-us/

She has more experience fighting the TT juggernaut than anyone. You also might check out a couple of SBM posts on the topic, which have useful links of their own:

http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/?p=135
http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/?p=130
http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/?p=134

How do I start to challenge this “therapy”? I challenged the nurse and she directed me to the literature. I did, and found the literature to be pretty lacking in evidence. I now see that the new EHR actually provides a provision for MDs to order HT for patients and some are using it! How do I convince the hospital administration that HT is pseudoscience and has no place in a modern medical facility?

I did ask my healer about the Randi challenge. He said he looked into it quite seriously and was convinced that the structure was set up in such a way as to almost guarantee that no one, no matter how compelling their evidence was, could prevail.

As the trials are designed in part by the applicant himself, such a lack of confidence can only mean three things (which are not mutually exclusive, I must point out):

1) He has not actually investigated the JREF challenge to any real extent.

2) He is paranoid enough to believe a conspiracy in anything.

3) He knows his healing is actually a fake.

Seriously, the million-dollar challenge is set up to be absolutely fair. Quite a number of people have failed at the preliminary stage, all earnest believers in their “gifts” and baffled at how their gifts failed to manifest when all bias was removed.

“I did ask my healer about the Randi challenge. He said he looked into it quite seriously and was convinced that the structure was set up in such a way as to almost guarantee that no one, no matter how compelling their evidence was, could prevail.”

But, then, being the true sceptic that you are, you didn’t just accept his word for it but looked into it yourself.

Didn’t you?