• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 2031 0

fraud in science? Is it fair to be suspicious of an entire profession because of a few bad apples? There are at least two important differences, it seems to me. First, no one doubts that science actually works, whatever mistaken and fraudulent claim may from time to time be offered. But whether there are any ‘miraculous’ cures from faith-healing, beyond the body’s own ability to cure itself, is very much at issue. Secondly, the expose of fraud and error in science is made almost exclusively by science. The discipline polices itself, meaning that scientists are aware of the potential for charlatanry and mistakes. But the exposure of fraud and error in faith-healing is almost never done by other faith-healers. Indeed, it is striking how reluctant the churches and synagogues are in condemning demonstrable deception in their midst.

When conventional medicine fails, when we must confront pain and death, of course we are open to other prospects for hope.

And, after all, some illnesses are psychogenic. Many can be at least ameliorated by a positive cast of mind. Placebos are dummy drugs, often sugar pills. Drug companies routinely compare the effectiveness of their drugs against placebos given to patients with the same disease who had no way to tell the difference between the drug and the placebo. Placebos can be astonishingly effective, especially for colds, anxiety, depression, pain, and symptoms that are plausibly generated by the mind. Conceivably, endorphins -the small brain proteins with morphine-like effects - can be elicited by belief. A placebo works only if the patient believes it’s an effective medicine. Within strict limits, hope, it seems, can be transformed into biochemistry.

As a typical example, consider the nausea and vomiting that frequently accompany the chemotherapy given to cancer and AIDS patients. Nausea and vomiting can also be caused psycho-genically, for instance by fear. The drug ondansetron hydrochlo-ride greatly reduces the incidence of these symptoms; but is it actually the drug or the expectation of relief? In a double-blind study 96 per cent of patients rated the drug effective. So did ten per cent of the patients taking an identical-looking placebo.

In an application of the fallacy of observational selection, unanswered prayers may be forgotten or dismissed. There is a real toll, though: some patients who are not cured by faith reproach themselves - perhaps it’s their own fault, perhaps they didn’t believe hard enough. Scepticism, they are rightly told, is an impediment both to faith and to (placebo) healing.

Nearly half of all Americans believe there is such a thing as psychic or spiritual healing. Miraculous cures have been associated with a wide variety of healers, real and imagined, throughout human history. Scrofula, a kind of tuberculosis, was in England called the ‘King’s evil’, and was supposedly curable only by the King’s touch. Victims patiently lined up to be touched; the monarch briefly submitted to another burdensome obligation of high office, and, despite no one, it seems, actually being cured, the practice continued for centuries.

A famous Irish faith-healer of the seventeenth century was Valentine Greatraks. He found, somewhat to his surprise, that he had the power to cure disease, including colds, ulcers, ‘soreness’ and epilepsy. The demand for his services became so great that he had no time for anything else. He was forced to become a healer, he complained. His method was to cast out the demons responsible for disease. All diseases, he asserted, were caused by evil spirits, many of whom he recognized and called by name. A contemporary chronicler, cited by Mackay, noted that

he boasted of being much better acquainted with the intrigues of demons than he was with the affairs of men ... So great was the confidence in him, that the blind fancied they saw the light which they did not see - the deaf imagined that they heard - the lame that they walked straight, and the paralytic that they had recovered the use of their limbs. An idea of health made the sick forget for awhile