from Hacker News

Troubling examples of ‘pseudoscience’ at the Cleveland Clinic

by seesomesense on 1/25/17, 11:00 AM with 2 comments

• by seesomesense on 1/25/17, 11:01 AM

  "The Cleveland Clinic also offers “Energy Medicine” therapy, described as “practices [that] are based on the premise that by promoting balance and flow in the body’s electromagnetic and subtle energies, health and well-being are improved.” Among the conditions this supposedly treats, the hospital lists multiple sclerosis and hormone imbalances. Similarly, its Center for Integrative Medicine touts the benefits of reiki, a “hands-on natural healing” technique that redirects “universal life force energy.” According to the Cleveland Clinic, those benefits include enhancing the immune system and improved tissue healing, and its practitioners treat patients with cancer, Parkinson’s disease and other serious illnesses.

  ....I am all too aware of how frightening, exhausting, stressful and dispiriting illness and hospitalization can be. I am broadly in favor of hospitals offering a wide range of psychological, emotional and spiritual supports. Though I do not subscribe to it myself, if reiki helps patients cope with being sick, I’m not categorically opposed to it, any more than I would be opposed to a visit from a chaplain or counselor.

  But it crosses an extremely important, bright line to call that kind of service “medicine,” or to ascribe a set of therapeutic benefits to it. Describing the manipulation of energy fields as a kind of treatment moves from evidence-based medicine into the realm of faith healing."

• by chmaynard on 1/25/17, 11:20 AM

  Cleveland Clinic is also one of several institutions that jumped at the chance to form a strategic alliance with Theranos:

  http://www.cleveland.com/healthfit/index.ssf/2016/05/clevela...