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Talk to your body?

There’s been yet another outbreak of pseudoscience in Botswana.  Sorry, I should correct that.  This example isn’t even worthy of the term “pseudoscience”.  Judge for yourself.

I recently received an email inviting me to “Botswana’s first BodyTalk Day”.  According to the invitation this is “a revolutionary new approach to healing that has become the language of health in over 30 countries”.  Wow.  Notice how that claim actually means precisely nothing?  It doesn’t say that millions of people are using it and it cures diabetes, AIDS and asthma.  No. it’s just become the “language of health”.

The invitation goes on to say that BodyTalk “utilises state-of-the-art energy medicine to optimise the body’s internal communications”.  Again, a statement that means precisely nothing.  Note the use of terms like “state of the art”, “energy medicine” and “optimise”.  All very vague don’t you think?

So off I went to the internet to do some Googling.  One of the first web sites I found described in detail how BodyTalk works. 

After a series of paragraphs explaining how our bodies are full of energy circuits, how the atoms we consist of are talking to one another and how we need to be resynchronised it explains what actually happens when you get yourself BodyTalked.

I hope you’re sitting down.  Trust me, I’m not making this up.  This is exactly what it says.

“For every malfunctioning energy circuit found, the practitioner or client contacts the corresponding “points” with his or her hands. The practitioner then lightly taps the client on the top of the head, which stimulates the brain center and causes the brain to re-evaluate the state of the body’s health.”

“The practitioner then taps the client on the sternum to “announce” the corrected energy flows to the rest of the body.”

So let me get this straight.  This “practitioner” who is presumably either deluded, deranged or depraved gets to touch you, pat you on the head and then tickle your tummy and you’re cured? 

I’m tempted to suggest a modified version of BodyTalk. I think I’ll call it BodyThump.  Come to me with your health problems, I’ll stroke whichever part of you looks appealing, perhaps for quite a long time if it’s VERY cute, smack you on back of the head, punch you in the stomach and charge you P500. 

So you think I’m joking?  Well, I am, but so are BodyTalk, surely?  Do they really expect us to take them seriously when they are talking such palpable gibberish?

Of course there is no science behind BodyTalk or any of the other ludicrous so-called alternative therapies that abound.  There’s no real evidence that they do anything because they simply DON’T do anything.  OK, forgive me, they do so something.  In fact they do two things.  Firstly they allow the placebo effect to demonstrate itself.  That’s the effect you often see in medicine where simply doing something, even it’s just giving a sugar pill, has a slight effect.  It’s to do with positive thinking, optimism and taking a bit more care of yourself.  The second thing it does is to help you lose weight.  From your wallet.

 

The demons of televangelism - Botswana Guardian

There’s an advertisement going around for a forthcoming “Leadership Life Development Convention”. This is being run by Bible Life Ministries, a local evangelical church and will be attended by “Bishop Dr” I.V. Hilliard. This gentleman is shown in the advertisement looking very serious as he rests his theological chin on his no-doubt very spiritual fingers.

My problem is that the so-called Dr Hilliard appears to break Harriman’s 1st Law of Evaluating Preachers. This says that you shouldn’t trust a preacher who drives a better car than you do or, in this case, a preacher who wears a more expensive watch than you do.

He also breaks Harriman’s Law of Doctorates. Anyone who claims to have a doctorate when in fact they bought it from a diploma mill is a fraud. Both Hilliard and his charming wife Bridgett have honorary doctorates from Friends International University. Not even the normal dodgy degrees purchased over the internet after submitting an essay, these guys got honorary degrees, presumably after dropping some cash?

I’ll put aside my personal beliefs for a while and will willingly acknowledge that certain religious groups do provide a real sense of community to their members, they provide moral guidance and a vision of hope. Frankly I don’t believe a word of it but each to his own I suppose.

My objection is to the flagrant abuse that televangelists get up to. Hilliard and his fellow ministers like Joyce Meyer (who also has a doctorate from an unaccredited university) and Benny Hinn, who is simply stealing money from his victims, are exploiting the gullible, the naïve and the sick. Benny Hinn is my “favourite” in that I find him particularly repulsive. A series of undercover operations have exposed the way in which his teams filter out the really sick from his televised miracle healing. His financial operations are notoriously secretive although he has recently been under very close review by the US Senate Finance Committee who wonder where all the money goes that he gets from his unsuspecting and hugely credulous viewers. His public appeal for donations towards his new $36 million personal private jet just seems to summarise his approach.

In my very brief research on Fake-Dr Hilliard I found an online invitation to his wife’s 50th birthday party in 2006. OK, you might think, how sweet of him to invite people to celebrate his beautiful wife’s birthday! But not so. Firstly you had to pay him $100 to attend and then you’re asked to bring her a present. There was even a list of gift ideas that included “Monetary gifts. Designer handbags: Gucci, Chanel, Louis Vuitton. Gift Certificates: Neiman Marcus, Saks Fifth Avenue, Escada”.

I confess I don’t know what half of those things are but the first one is just so blatant that it deserves repeating. “Monetary gifts”.

Roughly translated this means. “Pay me $100 to attend my wife’s no doubt spectacularly vulgar birthday party and bring along some cash to give her.”

As George Carlin once said about the typical evangelist’s message from God: “He loves you, and He needs money!”

This seems to be the basic message we get from the televangelists. The solution to the problems we face, whether it’s perceived family breakdown, HIV/AIDS, crime or old-fashioned social isolation, is to listen, switch off your critical faculties and to hand over the cash.

Simple or true? - Botswana Guardian

There’s a big difference between an idea that is simple and one that can be expressed simply. Although scientists often describe a theory as “elegant” that doesn’t always mean that it’s easy to understand. Famously Richard Feynman said of quantum theory that if you think you understand it, then you clearly don’t understand it.

The trouble is that people often fall victim to theories and ideas that are just simple and no more. Theories that sound truly simple but are simply untrue.

The principle behind homeopathy for instance can be expressed very simply. A disorder can be treated with a tiny dose of the thing that caused it. Acupuncture can be “explained” by saying that it promotes the free flow of “chi” around your body to enhance your energy balance. Reflexology says that there are pathways between the soles of your feet and every organ of your body. Fiddling with your feet can therefore heal those other parts that are ill. All of these ideas can be expressed very simply, in no more than a sentence or two.

But simplicity is not the same as truth.

Every genuinely scientific study of homeopathy, acupuncture and reflexology shows that they are nonsense. They do nothing real. Any improvement can be traced back to the placebo effect.

If you want a real understanding of how health can be promoted and illness overcome then you have to do more than just come out with ignorant platitudes, you need to do some thinking. Real thinking. With your brain.

Real thought, real science and real knowledge are the sworn enemies of superstition, magical thinking and all the New Age lunacy that we see around us. They are also the enemies of prejudice in whatever form it shows it’s ugly face.

In a letter I wrote recently to the Guardian I mentioned that I resented being accused of being like a member of the Ku Klux Klan, the nasty, bigoted and profoundly racist hate group in the USA. This accusation was made because I had stood up for science, medicine and rationalism. During this letter I mentioned in passing that I was the “father of a Jewish son”.

Perhaps someone can explain to me the logic behind the comment in Bugalo Chilume’s tirade the following week when, referring to me, he used the phrase “In Israel, Harriman’s homeland”?

For the record, I’m not Israeli and neither am I Jewish. Similarly I’ve been to Italy but I’m not a Catholic. I’ve been to the Far East but I’m not a Buddhist. I’ve read many articles by Chilume but I’m still sane.

The real danger we face in the world today is the epidemic of nonsense. The nonsense of AIDS denial is killing people. The nonsense of global warming denial is threatening to kill our grandchildren. The nonsense of xenophobic hatred as a cover for gross criminality is killing people in South Africa.

I can be the father of a Jew without being Israeli. I can be white and, on a good day, a fairly good person. Chilume can be logical but he seems to choose not to be so.

Can’t he do better than that? - Botswana Guardian

In a letter to the Guardian on 11th April we saw the return of Bugalo Chilume. As Voltaire said about God, if Chilume didn't exist he'd have to be invented. He really is a walking advertisement for reason, rationalism and thought. OK, admittedly by NOT demonstrating any of those things but I think reading his writings is an educational experience nevertheless.

We are all used to his ravings about Mugabe and how he's such a nice guy, much maligned by the evil imperialist West and probably very kind to small animals but that's what we expect from him. Mugabe of course can do no wrong and the fact that his economy and in particular his currency are now a laughing stock is someone else’s fault. The fact that he brazenly tries to steal an election is no doubt another conspiracy by the CIA, Prince Philip and aliens to smear him.

However what provoked my greatest reaction to his letter was an implied reference to me.

The last sentence of his letter referred to the various letters and articles that Gilbert Sesinyi has written in the Guardian over the last few months. Most of these were in response to, or prompted, articles and letters by and from me. I wasn’t the only one who opposed Gilbert's ideas but I did play a significant role.

His last words describe Gilbert's opponent letter writers, and therefore presumably me, as "members of the local Ku Klux Klan sleeper cell".

Just in case anyone hasn't heard of the KKK they are a dreadful, despicable and disgusting racist group in the USA, the ones with the white robes and burning crosses. They have a history of lynching blacks, persecuting their opponents and hating Jews, Catholics, liberals and anyone with a functioning brain. So you can understand how being accused of being like the KKK is grossly insulting, particularly when I am a social liberal, the father of a Jewish son and in possession of a functioning brain.

However, despite a moment of anger I ended up rather amused by his comments. I couldn’t help but think that if that is the best he can do I must have overestimated his reasoning skills, although that IS quite a challenge I admit.

All I did was to express my belief that reason is better than superstition, that science is better than magic and that enlightenment is preferable to ignorance. If all he can do in response is launch an ad hominem attack against me and other rationalists then I find that rather disappointing. Where’s the argument, where’s the evidence that I’m wrong, where’s the critical reasoning? Somewhat absent it seems.

All we saw from him was the grossly defamatory suggestion that because I and others don’t share his views we must be a bunch of vicious racists. Come on Chilume, you can do better than that. Can’t you?

Homeopathy - Letter to Mmegi

I was appalled to see the article entitled "People living with HIV turn to homeopathy" in Mmegi on Thursday 28th February. Appalled because I don't think we should allow charlatans to sell their ludicrous products and, in so doing, exploit the desperate, the sick and the naïve.

Let's be clear. Homeopathy is based on nonsense. The article states that it is based on the idea of treating patients with a minute dose of the substance that causes the symptoms the patient is experiencing, but this is rubbish. What you actually get from a homeopath is water. Homeopathic "remedies" are so diluted that not a single atom of any original substance remains. If you push a homeopath on this subject you’ll eventually get them to confess that they believe the water somehow "remembers" a substance that it once contained. This is utter gibberish.

Every controlled test of homeopathic remedies has failed to show any real effect. The homeo-pathetic movement has consistently failed to help anyone other than themselves. Help themselves to fat bank balances that is. What the charlatans in Maun are really doing is breaking the law. Section 15 (1) (c) of the Consumer Protection Regulations forbids people from promising "outcomes where those outcomes have no safe scientific, medical or performance basis". If they take a single thebe for their water treatment they are breaking the law.

The most ridiculous aspects of what they say are almost unbelievable. The homeopath covered in the article confesses that she prescribed a "grief remedy" as well as something for liver toxicity. This is just scandalous.

So what about the wonderful effects the victims are supposedly seeing in Maun? They are nothing more than the placebo effect. Doctors around the world know that giving patients a totally ineffective medicine will make them a feel a little bit better for a short while. But that's more to do with getting a bit of attention and sympathy than any real effect.

What homeopaths pretend to offer people with HIV is hope. Hope is a great thing but only when it is based on a genuine hope, a real hope of improvement. What in fact homeopaths offer is false hope, based on a mixture of ignorance and lies. I have contempt for people who exploit the desperate. Utter contempt. I genuinely hope that nobody falls for this nonsense. If just one person does and stops taking their ARVs, the drugs that DO work, then the homeopaths who have come here thinking they can fool us will have blood on their hands.

Scence is blind - Botswana Guardian

Saying something out loud doesn't make it true. Writing something in a newspaper doesn't make it true. Even just believing something doesn't mean what you believe is true. In the past people were taught, and genuinely believed, that the world was flat. They believed that the stars were gods, that the Sun rotated around the Earth and that illness was caused by evil spirits. But we moved on. We embraced knowledge rather than superstition and we put behind us beliefs that had no foundation.

Or did we?

Last week the astonishing South African Minister of Health, Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, stated that traditional healers, whose work is soon to be integrated into the conventional health system would not have to prove that their remedies actually worked. Specifically she said that traditional medicine should not be "bogged down in clinical trials". According to the BBC she said that "We cannot use Western models of protocols for research and development".

Yet again she has missed the point. There is no such thing as a "Western protocol for research". There is no such thing as “Western research”. In fact there is no such thing as "Western medicine" any more than there is "Western sunshine". Medicine is medicine and the only real distinctions we should make are between medicines that work and those that do not, between ideas that are useful and those that are not, between things that actually help humanity and those that do not.

The scientific method, the approach that genuine medicine really uses, is based on one key thing. It's based on predictions that can be falsified. Not things that can be proved but things that can be falsified and that's what the clinical trials that Manto complains about are really all about. They are about really testing a theory that something works and testing it rigorously. What she presumably fears, along with homeopaths, reflexologists and herbal medicine sellers is the dreaded "double-blind, controlled trial". You get two groups, one gets the medicine you are testing and the other gets something that looks and feels like the medicine but is really often no more than a sugar pill or a glass of water. The key thing is that neither the people taking the medicine nor the doctors or nurses who actually give it to them know which is which until the end of the trial. Only then are the details taken out of a sealed envelope and the results properly analysed. That way can you remove the effect of people’s expectations. That way you can rule out the placebo effect, which is what happens when people believe they are getting a medicine when in fact they are not but they get slightly better anyway, just because they believe something is happening. The placebo effect is a powerful effect and it’s only by “blinding” both the patients and the doctors in a trial that you can rule out it’s effect.

In that sort of trial we could see whether so-called traditional medicines work. Hopefully some of them would. Maybe we really would find something marvelous that can really help humanity. Maybe science and tradition could come together and we could see through the medieval distortions and ignorance surrounding us

True science is a genuinely wonderful thing. Like justice it is blind. Blind to untruth, blind to expectations and blind to prejudice. Like all truth it is blind to prejudice, blind to ignorance and blind to lies.