Energy healing is presented as affordable, absolute, painless, and free of side effects. The problem for a practitioner, therefore, is how to distinguish one’s self from fellow peddlers of medical magic.

For Quantum Touch clinicians, the strategy is to stress that patients get multiple energies from various Chinese and Japanese techniques. Extending this thought, I wonder if it would be a better idea is to have energy from an original source. Eastern ideas are always said to come from China, Japan, or India. How about some love for Mongolia, Sri Lanka, or Guam?

At any rate, Quantum Touch proponents claim their powers come from exercises focusing on breathing and body awareness. Founder Richard Gordon emphasizes that “all healing is self-healing,” which would seemingly make Quantum Touch unnecessary. Gordon also trumpets its ability for post-surgical patients, though the better solution would seem to be bypassing surgery since Quantum Touch puts a panacea literally at your fingertips.

Like most alternative medicine, Quantum Touch makes liberal use of pseudoscience language. For readers new to the blog, pseudoscience refers to using science terminology incorrectly or using terms that sound scientific, but are not. An example from Gordon’s website includes “spontaneous structural realignment,” which sounds to me like throwing your back out. Then there’s this goodie: “Quantum Touch is a method of natural healing that works with the Life Force Energy of the body to promote optimal wellness. Quantum Touch helps to maximize the body’s own capacity to heal.” Or this one: “Given the right energetic, emotional, nutritional, and spiritual environments, the natural state of the body is perfect health.” Apparently Quantum Touch clinicians have yet to find this proper balance, since they also die.

Other pseudoscience giveaways are fantastic claims not backed by evidence or testing, such as Gordon saying that five minutes of Quantum Touch cured a child’s bowed legs. The claims are also wide-ranging, asserting it can cure traumas, burns, poison oak, and virtually any other pain or illness. For this far-reaching healing ability, no one summoned a Quantum Touch clinician when the train derailed in Philadelphia. Gordon’s website list several patients who reported pain reduction, a good time for my monthly recitation that the plural of anecdote is not data.

Here’s how we know energy healing claims are without merit. As seen earlier, Quantum Touch proponents claim it can cure anything, at least if conditions are right. But it cannot cure or mitigate ALS or Laughing Sickness, which are always fatal. Conversely, some sicknesses such as a runny nose are never fatal and are always followed by complete recovery. It requires magical thinking to credit Quantum Touch with healing someone who was already headed to recovery. The maladies in the middle, such as mild arthritis, are cyclical, so Quantum Touch will eventually “work,” for the same reason treating it with Crunch Berries and strawberry milk will.

Gordon offers workshops, which include, “A series of breathing and body awareness exercises to help you focus and amplify life-force energy.” This is begging the question. It assumes life force energy exists, then uses exercise results to affirm it.

The workshops also teach “how to amplify the power of your sessions by work with chakras, toning and vortexing the life-force energy.” Students also are taught “how to use the Amplified Resonance Technique to turbo charge your own sessions so they have a power similar to a group sessions.” This mix of ancient mystic terms with modern vernacular is how energy healing adapts. Gordon uses “amplified,” “resonance,” “turbo” and “vortex” to sound impressive, but also mixes in New Age buzzwords like chakra and life force energy to toss a cosmic salad.

Energy healing was called animal magnetism by Franz Mesmer in the 1700s. The Chinese invented meridians to explain the flow of something else made-up, chi. This pretend energy has gone by many names, including prana and ki. The alleged source of this energy evolves, with modern incarnations crediting biofields or subatomic vibrations. For those preferring to stay more New Age, we have astral bodies and transcendent beings as the power source.

In advanced training, Gordon teaches physiological happiness, exploration of a new paradigm, and a portal to wisdom. If you’re lucky, you’ll also get a glossary to explain what any of that means.

Whatever students get out of it, they are supremely unlikely to come away with a useful skill. Emily Rosa tested 21 energy healers who claimed they could detect her life force energy. For her test, she placed a partition in front of the Quantum Touch practitioners, who were unaware if she was behind it. They had a 50 percent chance of being correct by guesswork, and still hit just 44 percent in 280 attempts. Her results were published in the Journal of the American Medical Association when she was 9 years old. Yes, they were schooled by a 4^th grader.

Not that this was a fatal blow. While Gordon started the idea, you can’t copyright quackery. One person who copied the idea was Daniel Metraux, whose website gloats that he is “one of the top 10 Psychic Surgeons on the West Coast.” I was unaware there was such a poll.

The website also notes that his “revolutionary alignment techniques heal and rejuvenate from within.” He provides it, but it’s from within, somehow.

As to how the treatment goes, “The number of sessions that you will need depends on your current level of discomfort, your reception to Daniel’s techniques, and your dedication for becoming healthier.” So if you’re not made healthy, you’re not trying hard enough!

If you’re not sick or hurting, the Holistic Wellness Institute still says come on in. “If there are no specific issues a full body treatment can be given. In this case, a series of hand positions will be used until something comes up to be treated.”

To summarize, you’re not sick, you could heal yourself if you were, pay up.

My concern about Reiki being offered in a local hospital morphed into mortification as I looked into how widespread such practices are. It turns out that unscientific treatments are being offered at the highest levels of U.S. medicine, including Johns Hopkins and the Mayo Clinic.

In some states, a degree from a naturopathic college, which has no defined standard of care, helps toward board certification. Energy healing, homeopathy, and acupuncture are inconsistent with biology, chemistry, and physics, and might be rejected by themselves, but are allowed in the back door of hospitals and universities as integrative care.

That’s how otherwise reputable institutions end up endorsing Reiki and therapeutic touch, and why 23 U.S. medical schools offer integrative medicine residencies. At Yale, physician David Katz practices integrative medicine with this logic: “With internal medicine, once I’ve tried everything the textbooks tell me, I’m done. But with integrative medicine, I always have something to try. I never run out of options.” But there is nothing to suggest the likes of homeopathy, Joy Touch, and Gerson Therapy will treat or heal a patient. You could try standing on your head to cure Whooping Cough or subscribing to Golf Digest to relieve gout, but it won’t work, and neither will therapeutic touch or reflexology.

Katz attempts to couch his position as one of flexibility. He told Wired, “It’s close-minded to say the only stuff that could work is the stuff we already know works.” This is a strawman, as no one is saying that. Of course other techniques and medicine could work, which is why research continues.

But there should be evidence a treatment is effective before trying it. Another doctor at an elite institution embracing unscientific ideas is Adam Perlman, director of Duke’s Integrative Medicine program. In the same Wired article, he said, “I don’t just want to focus on getting people on the right medication. Just because you’ve gotten blood pressure in a normal range doesn’t mean you’ve optimized someone’s vitality.” “Optimized someone’s vitality” is the kind of gobbledygook I heard at the psychic and paranormal fair and it is shameful, dangerous, and a violation of the Hippocratic Oath for a medical expert to dispense such advice. Desperate patients and parents will cling to what Perlman and Katz offer and possibly reject proven treatments or gain a false hope that leads to ruin.

It was reassuring to learn that Yale’s medical school also includes Dr. Steven Novella, who takes a dim view of his colleagues endorsing techniques other than medicine. He knows this can lead to cases like a patient of his who had ALS. Unable to accept the diagnosis, the patient found a naturopath who put him on a treatment of natural supplements. Of course, this did as much good for the patient as would have reading Golf Digest while standing on his head.

The types of folks who treat ALS with herbal supplements often speak in hushed tones of secret cures being repressed by universities, hospitals, and the pharmaceutical industry. This is absurd for two reasons. One, these entities are portrayed as being only in it for the money, while simultaneously rejecting a treatment what would make them billions. If these ideas worked, there would be research, not repression. Second, despite dehumanizing terms like Big Pharma, institutions are run by people who get sick and who have loved ones. If they suppressed a leukemia cure, that’s a cure that would be unavailable to them if they got the disease.

Novella compares a university medical center embracing energy healing to its astronomy department hiring an astrologer. British epidemiologist Ben Goldacre concurs, saying it’s like using flaws in the airline industry to justify buying a flying carpet.

Novella reports that the ALS patient came back to him, but only after wasting one of his few remaining years. He also had to deal with the extra angst of knowing he had spent a year being taken advantage of while at his most vulnerable. As another example, Novella said, “No acupuncturists are up front about the reality of what they do. They’ve got Chinese medical charts with qi and meridians on the walls. And they instill in the patient hostility to science-based medicine and our notion of health and disease.”

But because of marketing and scientific ignorance/stupidity, alternative medicine practitioners can get away with promoting homeopathy as a cure for Parkinson’s or touting Chelation Therapy as a treatment for Alzheimer’s. And these kind of tragedies happen all the time. Studies from Norway, Japan, and South Korea reveal higher mortality rates and lower quality of life for cancer patients who pursue complementary and alternative medicine. Even worse is Homeopaths Without Borders. These vultures go to Third World countries in the wake of disaster, selling worthless cures that further victimize the displaced.

Alternative medicine proponents often include an appeal to nature, accompanied by a false historical narrative about how much better it was when people lived in harmony with it. But as Slate science and health editor Laura Helmuth put it: “People died young, and they died painfully of tuberculosis, tonsillitis, fever, childbirth, and worms. History…dispels romantic notions that people used to live in harmony with the land or be more in touch with their bodies. Life was miserable and full of contagious disease, spoiled food, malnutrition, exposure, and injuries.”

Persons dealing with serious conditions want quick, easy, and total solutions. Mainstream medicine cannot deliver this and won’t claim to. Alternative medicine, meanwhile, makes the claim but not the delivery. That’s why ideas like the ones expressed in this post can engender so much rage. These are terrifying truths that threaten false hope. The Cancer Treatment Centers of America runs ads with patients talking about how other doctors gave them no chance, whereas the Center delivered hope. However, that hope includes naturopathy, an umbrella term that encompasses energy healing, herbs, and spirituality. Hope, yes. Successful alternative cancer treatment, no.

Because people don’t like being sick or seeing their loved ones suffer, alternative medicine is always going to find fertile ground, literally if using sandalwood to cure dyspepsia.

Often, ancient (or allegedly ancient) mystic practices are updated for the times. For instance, a Shaman may use a beeping device to locate harmony imbalance. The most straightforward attempt I’ve seen at combining ancient nonsense with the modern is the bio-ching, a portmanteau of biorhythms and the I-Ching.

Biorhythms is the pseudoscientific notion that our lives are impacted by rhythmic cycles, usually said to be based on our birthdate. For example, one’s performance in an office presentation will be good, bad, or so-so, depending on where one’s biorhythm cycle is at. Meanwhile, the I-Ching is a form of Chinese divination based on a book with 64 hexagrams. Mixing the two superstitions are Roderic and Amy Sorrell, who wrote a computer program that includes 512 biorhythm traits that are randomly matched with an I-Ching hexagram. The results can be interpreted to tell you how to deal with your sore throat or mild anxiety.

For maximum results, $250 a day will get you into the Sorrell home for a deeper analysis. The price includes room, board, and access to 100 percent of the world’s bio-ching clinicians. For double the price, you get to stay on their houseboat, presumably providing access to dolphin telepathy.

But you may be able to avoid the bio-ching altogether if you first consult an aura therapist. These folks maintain the aura can foretell if the body is about to get hit with a disease, then preemptively zap it.

Types of aura therapy include therapeutic touch, a form of hands-off energy healing, and aura-somatherapy, which is not a parody despite being described thusly: “a holistic soul therapy in which the vibrational powers of color, crystals and natural aromas combine with light in order to energize and harmonize the body, mind and spirit of mankind.” I tried mixing many of the words in this sentence and noticed it didn’t change the meaning any. The new sentence: “a harmonizing spirit therapy in which the holistic mind and vibrational powers of natural color and crystals combine with aromas to energize the soul of mankind.”

For those who prefer medicine that goes beyond two empty hands, we have laser wand crystals, which center on “detecting disturbances in the auric field.” It is described as using the crystal’s electromagnetic field to balance the aura and protect the patient by preventing disease from striking in the first place. I rubbed one of these on me at the psychic and paranormal fair and haven’t had a disease since!

While at the fair, I frequently heard peddlers tell me they just felt the energy or sensed the power. These are decidedly unscientific ways of deducing illness and finding cures, and with these techniques, claims are limited only by the imagination. That’s how you end up with lines like “accessing the meridian of the primary chakra to unblock the flow of auric energy.” Trying proving someone did NOT do that.

If promising to balance chakras or restore harmony, there is no way to test these claims. You can’t tell if it failed or worked. But if using alternative techniques to cure or mitigate pain or illness, they might occasionally seem to work for a number or reasons. For one, many illnesses and discomforts are cyclical, and may have run their natural course or be in lull.

Also, the attention from a caring, mysterious healer can make a person feel better, at least mentally. This can enhance the placebo effect, where suggestion, belief, expectation, and reassessment can seem to make a difference and perhaps even lead to physical changes.

I am sometimes asked, “If the patient thinks it’s working and feels better for it, what’s wrong with using it?” What’s wrong is that the patient may later opt to use these techniques to deal with a more serious condition. Persons have died when using energy healing, crystals, and dieting to battle diseases that could have been cured with real medicine.

Also, patients may credit the alternative treatment if it’s used in conjunction with genuine medical care. This again raises the danger that they may later use the alternative practice exclusively, owing to convenience, price, or comfort. Since they’re not medicine, alternative treatments are free from side effects, overdose, and addiction. Their practitioners are also much less likely than a doctor to acknowledge deficiencies. A shaman at the fair who incorrectly diagnosed me with upper back pain blamed the failure not on himself, but on the room’s unbelieving, negative energy. Must have been the one I brought with me.

I prefer to immerse myself in the topics I write about. If I can receive reflexology, engage a pet psychic, or lend a hand to a palmist, it makes for a more authentic experience to relate. Alas, this will not be the case on this post about gua sha (pronounced gwah saw, although buzzsaw is a better description of what the person goes through).

It falls under the traditional Chinese medicine umbrella, and may be the most impractical of them all. It’s certainly the most painful. It starts off pleasantly enough, with the practitioner applying oil to the patient’s body part. Next comes a scraping of that part, continued until substantial bruising occurs. Bruising is the natural result of the body being pummeled, so this might appeal to alternative medicine patients, with their stated fondness for nature. Singing birds, flowing brooks, busted capillaries.

During scraping, the implement is pressed hard and moved across the skin. I’ve seen safety and protocol for treatments that caution on how to avoid bruising. Gua sha, by contrast, teaches how to cause it. It would be an impressive medicine if its before-and-after photos were switched.

A ceramic spoon is the most-common tool, but other some users employ bones, water buffalo horns, coins, metal caps, and shoehorns. For the fully-sophisticated gua sha practitioner, we have specially designed products from guashatools.com. As described on the website: “Gua sha professional instruments combine performance and user comfort. (It goes without saying that patient comfort is not a gua sha consideration). Enjoy increased control with a textured ergonomic handle. (Much easier to pound the flesh). The clinician’s hand is protected when applying firm pressure. (Can’t say the same for the client’s back). Lifetime guarantee (which is good for 20 minutes if the practitioner pushes hard enough in the wrong place).

The goal of all this is to turn healthy skin into about 18 inches of purple mush. Proponents claim the bruising releases unhealthy elements, so for maximum health benefits, insult Floyd Mayweather’s mother. In Air Assault School, we were told that pain was weakness leaving the body, and the same mindset is used here.

Like most treatments from the east, it comes with an appeal to its age. But what matters in medicine is efficiency, not antiquity. Last week, I spoke with a co-worker who defended using a medicine based on how long it’s been around. I’m baffled when persons who welcome other advances are reluctant to do so when it comes to their health. The co-worker does not use an outhouse, keep her lunch in an icebox, or get to work on a donkey.

The bruises inflicted by gua sah should go away in a couple of weeks. If it goes wrong (remember, being done right means turning purple and sore), a localized collection of blood outside the vessels called a hematoma may form. If so, it must be drained, unless the patients wants to try an especially ironic return trip to the gua sah clinician.

While I can’t say much for the practitioners’ medical qualities, I must credit their linguistics. This is their euphemism for intentionally bruising a patient: “Instrument-assisted unidirectional press-stroking to create transitory therapeutic extravagation of blood in the sub cutis.”

Then there’s this: “Gua sha produces an immune protective effect and stimulates healing.” This is true because after having your back whacked repeatedly, the immune system will go to work to fix the mess.

The practice is most commonly said to be used to combat pain, but like many alternative medicines, it claims to treat a wide assortment of unpleasantness, such as the cold, flu, bronchitis, asthma, congestion, and the three most ubiquitous ailments targeted by alternative medicine: Toxicity, low energy, and poor circulation.

With regard to pain management, gua sha only works because it takes your mind off your headache and onto another body part back throbbing from the flogging. By the time the bruising is gone, the headache would have vanished on its own.

By the way, traditional Chinese medicine is the term for a patchwork of therapeutic practices, many of them contradictory, which were used over two millennium across an expanse of East-Central Asia. It only became labeled and formalized under Chairman Mao, who didn’t believe in it or use it, but who saw political expediency in promoting it. TCM long predates Germ Theory and science-based medicine. The overarching concept rests on nonexistent anatomical features, specifically that chi flows through meridians, with the maintaining of this flow being the key to health.

It is usually touted as “alternative” or “complementary” medicine. There is no “alternative” or “complementary” medicine any more than there is an “alternative” patient who has been “complementarily” cured. In the case of gua sha patients, the cure comes when the treatment wears off.

This month, I have targeted the use of Reiki by Genesis Health System. I began with a note to the Genesis website’s “Contact us” feature and a letter to Genesis administrator Doug Cropper. I received no reply to either.

Next, I submitted a message to the Genesis Facebook page that contained the same information as in this letter that was published in the Quad City Times and Rock Island Dispatch-Argus.

After my Facebook message, I received this reply: “Thank you for sharing your concern with us. I am going to pass this along to our cancer center for further review. Would you share a contact method with us so that they, or a patient advocate, can contact you for further follow up?”

I gave them an e-mail address and two telephone numbers, but received no further reply.

Finally, I sent an e-mail to Genesis senior communications consultant Craig Cooper, asking to speak to someone about the use of Reiki at Genesis. He asked what I wanted to know, so I submitted a dozen questions that yielded this response: “We received your comments. We acknowledge your concerns and understand your views. Thank you for your comments. Please direct any additional correspondence to me. We will have no further comment.”

These are the questions Genesis would not answer:

1. Does Genesis consider Reiki medicine? If so, what studies suggest this, and what steps are taken to mitigate the possibility of side effects or overdose? If it’s not considered medicine, why is it being offered at Genesis?

2. Could you describe what Reiki is?

The next several questions center on this paragraph from the cancer care treatment page of the Genesis Website: “Reiki, the name used to describe universal energy flow from one person to another, speeds the body’s own ability to rejuvenate and in some cases, regenerate healthy cells, by increasing and enhancing the positive energy flow through a person’s energy body.”

3. What is the source of Reiki energy?
4. How is this energy accessed?
5. What instruments are used to determine how much energy is being used?
6. Is this energy measured in joules, or some other unit?
7. How is the energy transferred from practitioner to patient?
8. What is universal energy flow?
9. What is positive energy flow?
10. What is an energy body?
11. What is the basis for the claim that Reiki can rejuvenate and regenerate healthy cells?
12. I am curious about the Usui Method of Natural Healing that is listed as being taught in the Reiki levels one and two classes. What is this method, and what can it heal? For instance, could it be used to treat ailments such as a broken arm or herniated disc?

To recap, four messages were sent to Genesis, with “no comment” being the gist of the replies. Genesis officials are noncommittal on whether or not Reiki could be used to treat a heart attack or to close a scalp wound. While not citing the source of this energy or explaining what type it is, or offering evidence of Reiki’s efficiency or existence, Genesis continues to offer treatment based on it. This is not being done at a mall kiosk or by someone trying it out on a friend’s incessant backache. It is being offered by a mainstream medical facility whose website boasts that it is “always bringing new heights of excellence in health care,” and claiming to deliver “groundbreaking research.” I suppose there is something groundbreaking about a hospital treating aliments with magic waves.

When receiving the “treatment,” the patient usually lies down, often with soothing music and scented candles thrown in. It’s like paying for a massage without getting massaged.

Since Genesis officials won’t answer my questions, I am left to guess as to why it is offering Reiki. It could be money. It could be that it got in through the back door as palliative care, piggybacking on Tai Chi or yoga, which can be legitimate ways of dealing with the stress of cancer. But Genesis is not advertising Reiki as palliative, but is crediting it with regenerating cells. This is the most blatant fraud on the website. One can vaguely claim “energy” without bothering to explain it. But cell regeneration is measurable and knowable, and for a hospital to claim Reiki does this is horribly irresponsible, if not criminal.

When patients see a service offered by a hospital, they trust that it works. Genesis is violating this trust promoting Reiki, which has never been shown to have any medicinal value. Despite the Moline Skeptics’ efforts, the cancer treatment plan of an area hospital continues to include waving hands and energy attunements.

As I noted last week, I want all nonsense exposed, even if it appears on my blog. Well, I let a doozey slip through in one of my first posts 11 months ago, when I addressed chiropractic and Reiki. In my conclusion, I wrote, “Reiki teaches that the energy possesses an advanced form of intelligence, and can serve as cosmic doctor and surgeon. It is thus able to diagnose and heal the patient. This is handy for the 100 percent of Reiki practitioners who have no medical training.”

It turns out there are hundreds, probably even thousands of Reiki practitioners who have medical training. Or, more accurately, there are thousands of medical personnel who have been trained on Reiki. Mainstream hospitals are offering the course, and the students include the hospitals’ nurses, who then use the technique on patients. Just to be clear: Registered Nurses in standard U.S. hospitals are using an unproven form of energy to treat their patients. A healing method based on accessing an unknown anatomical feature, using no known law of physics, is considered medicine by some with Western medical education and experience.

Since it lacks standards and its methods are never fully explained, Reiki is hard to pin down. But it is primarily the practice of using human hands can tap into a patient’s life force energy and heal them. There are no instruments used to detect this energy, no way to measure how many joules are derived in this process, and no way to determine the source of this energy or tell how it is being accessed or directed.

Proponents will sometimes point proudly to Reiki’s complete lack of side effects and dangers. This is because it is not medicine or treatment, so overdosing or misuse is impossible. Reiki is often presented as “complementary” medicine, to be used alongside treatments for cancer and pain. This is less dangerous than using it as “alternative” medicine, but this still poses risks. For instance, the patient may decide someone waving hands over their chest is preferable to another dreaded round of chemotherapy, so they skip the latter. Also, it is impossible to establish grounds for Reiki’s legitimacy if it is being used in conjunction with real medicine.

There have been studies done on Reiki, with little to show for it. A National Institutes of Health report found, “Overall there is a lack of high-quality research on Reiki, and the studies that have been done show conflicting results.”

Even John Killen of the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine, a taxpayer- funded research facility that is much friendlier to nonsense notions, concluded, “There is no scientific evidence to prove that such energy exists.” An article in the center’s journal added, “The serious methodological and reporting limitations of limited existing Reiki studies preclude a definitive conclusion on its effectiveness.”

Yet in the Quad Cities, the Genesis Health System website boasts of Reiki’s ability to tap a “universal energy flow” and “positive energy flow.” These are undefined terms and pseudoscientific notions that have no place being endorsed by a reputable institution. It even credits Reiki with regenerating cell growth. There is nothing in scientific literature to support this, and it is irresponsible for a mainstream hospital to dispense this as medical advice.

Most pain comes and goes, and persons are most likely to give Reiki a shot when they are at their most desperate. It may seem to work, owing to natural fluctuations or the placebo effect. But this isn’t backed by double blind studies and the standards are so loose that I know an elementary school student who is a practitioner, a Reiki Rookie if you will.

In a Washington Post article, Reiki practitioner Marydale Pecora, without intentional irony, said, “People come to me when nothing else is working. It’s a last-ditch effort to get relief from a medical challenge and to restore balance.” “Restoring balance” is another meaningless pseudoscience term, one of many that abound in Reiki. Percora’s hospital is one of 800 using Reiki, per the UCLA study cited in the Post article.

Percora has an answer to the lack of double blind studies and scientific proof: “It just works,” she said. Maybe if she says that 1,000 times we can consider that metadata. From the Post article, here’s how Pecora puts this mysterious panacea to work: “Pecora quietly moved through the circle of folding chairs, conducting attunements. Her thin hands fluttered across people’s bodies. She blew on the crowns of heads and faces, as participants focused on realigning and opening the energy channels.”

This is now medicine in some U.S. hospitals. The medical establishment embracing unproven treatments is as strange a mix as astronomers conducting research with horoscope writers.

Still, it is happening. The Tampa Bay Times reports on Kimberly Gray doing the same at her place of work. In the article, Gray tells of patients regaining movement and overcoming severe pain. The Reiki world is full of such claims, but five thousand anecdotes does not equal one piece of data. Double blind studies are needed to eliminate bias, selective memories, and post hoc reasoning, and to account for the placebo effect.

I have written the Genesis Health System administrator, urging him to stop promoting Reiki. I have also e-mailed the media relations coordinator, asking if he can put me in contact with someone who can explain why a hospital is using unproven “energy healing” on its patients. There is a reason why Reiki isn’t used to treat a broken arm or to stop internal bleeding.

The field has its defenders, but I really wonder how deep their belief is. Let’s suppose their child was in a wreck and their life was hanging in the balance. How comfortable would they be with the recovery being left in the circular motions of a Reiki practitioner?

Having your cancer treated by someone waving their hands over your torso is an approach most persons would reject. But mix it with other techniques and impressive-sounding terms presented under the umbrella of Integrated Oncology, and the patient may be swayed.

In a worst-case scenario, Magical Thinking, chemotherapy sickness, and assurances from a naturopath they’ve come to trust may combine to convince the patient that Reiki is all that’s needed reverse rouge cell growth.

Oncology deals with tumors, so genuine integrative oncology might involve a physician, pathologist, surgeon, chemotherapist, and radiologist working in conjunction to diagnose and treat a cancer patient. It might also include palliative care that focuses on the unpleasant symptoms of pain, nausea, and anxiety.

This is where the lines can start to become blurred. Since many cancer patients suffer vitamin and mineral deficiencies, nutrition is important, but a nutritionist is not treating cancer and the service provided is not nutritional therapy. Likewise, there is no relaxation therapy, music therapy or humor therapy. It is a problem when the likes of yoga, visualization, and meditation are presented as tools that fight cancer.

Integrative oncology involves many unproven and highly implausible treatments. Taken by themselves, the techniques may be harmless. But it is potentially fatal if they are relied on in lieu of medicine, and this could happen. Since patients don’t see the cells growing or regressing, they are more likely to be fooled into believing naturopathy or homeopathy is working. But using these to treat cancer is as ineffective as seeing a naturopath for a severed artery or popping homeopathic tablets for a concussion.

In integrative oncology, highly-effective, repeatedly successful treatments are on the same plain as sound nutrition, which is palliative care but is not fighting cancer, and also in the same category as reflexology, craniosacral therapy, and Therapeutic Touch.

Some integrative oncology techniques used in respected cancer-fighting institutions violate the laws of physics and chemistry, and are rooted in pre-scientific vitalism. Some invoke non-existent anatomical features such as acupuncture meridians, chiropractic subluxations, and reflexology points that correspond to organs. Traditional Chinese Medicine blames illness on wind, heat, dryness, temperature extremes, and dampness. Your mother may have thought this too when she told you to come in from the rain or you’d catch cold. Updated for today’s integrative oncologist, the admonition is, “Come inside before you catch mesothelioma.”

Another concern is that time, money, and resources are spent on researching treatments and techniques that have no prior plausibility, and aren’t based on science. These ideas bypass preclinical observation, in vitro testing, and animal research, and jump straight to randomized controlled tests. $50,000,000 in tax money went to integrate ancient Chinese medicine, homeopathy, and Ayurvedic medicine into cancer-fighting regimens. The Cancer Treatment Centers of America offers acupuncture, chiropractic, mind-body therapy, and naturopathy. At the Cleveland Clinic, a staff member analyzes patient tongues to determine what herbs would help fight cancer.

Then there was a test of a pancreatic cancer remedy that included massive amounts of vegetable juice, 81 daily tablets, skin brushing, salt and soda baths, and two daily coffee enemas. One-year survival rates for the unfortunate human guinea pigs was four times worse than those receiving standard care.

Most integrated oncology ideas are under the naturopathy umbrella, and this field is as diverse as the number of practitioners. The only common ground is the conviction that the body can heal itself if properly prompted. This is an idea that has no place in any cancer treatment.

Naturopathy is to health what a peanut butter-and-crack sandwich is to nutrition. It starts off with good ingredients, then rolls steadily downhill.