In the name of Allah, Most Gracious, Most Merciful.
Praise be to Allah, Lord of the universe.
Most Gracious, Most Merciful.
Master of the Day of Judgment.
You alone we worship; You alone we ask for help.
Guide us in the right path;
the path of those whom You blessed; not of those who have deserved wrath, nor of the strayers.
Esselamun Aleikum brothers and sisters,
It has been more than five months now, I am in this beautiful country and among these beautiful people. First, I would like to thank you for all your supports, physically and emotionally. Without such good friends, in fact brothers and sisters, it would be very difficult to settle down and start a new life. In fact these thanks go to The God who lead me to such good people.
In my khutba today, I will be talking about some controversial issues that may upset some of you, as a new friend of yours you may think it is politically incorrect to talk about these sbujects for me. Nevertheless, I feel I have to make this speech because I see some big faith differences in our small but strong group. We are strong, because we believe in The God alone, and this belief of ours convinces me that none of you will not feel bad about this speech. Because, as Allah says in Quran in chapter 39, verse 18 : They are the ones who examine all words, then follow the best. These are the ones whom GOD has guided; these are the ones who possess intelligence.
To summarize, I am going to talk about some math, physics, sceptisizm, some health issues, religion, corruptions in religions, Islam, NEFS, RUH, atheism, free will and conciousness, some important concepts in Quran, such as ILM and AKL, and some paranormal issues like Kirlian Photography, Auras, Ether, etc.
Let me distribute some papers to you that contain some information I will give during the speech, so that you can visually see what I try tell you.
Please look at the first page of the handouts I gave you. This page contains some statistical information about life expectancies in the countries around the world. I have collected this information from CIA (Central Intelligence Agency) web page. The web adress is at the top of the page. The page is sorted alphabetically according to the names of countries. Please take a quick look at this. This list includes both western and other countries. I will return back to this data again.
Quran tells us,
49:6 O you who believe, if a wicked person brings any news to you, you shall first investigate, lest you commit injustice towards some people, out of ignorance, then become sorry and remorseful for what you have done.
What I understand from this verse is I have to investigate all the information I receive from a wicked source. Moreover, it is logically deductible that we have to investigate the information from an unknown sources, also, as we are not sure the unknown source is wicked or NOT. Definition of a wicked source is beyond the scope of my speech.
A few weeks ago, I received some information from an unknown source on healing. Unknown source doesn’t mean that I don’t know where I got this information from, but I don’t know what is the originating source of this information. Therefore, I felt a need to investigate this information.
This information is about HOLISTIC HEALING practices. After my researches I found some interesting information about such phenomena as reiki, Kirlian photography, aura, chi, accupuncture, etc. Now, I want to share this information with you.
I want to begin by reading some verses from Quran. It is about Abraham and his prayer to The God. It is from Chapter 26, I will be reading verses 69 to 87.
Bismillahirrahmanirrahim,
Narrate to them Abraham's history.
He said to his father and his people, "What is this you are worshiping?"
They said, "We worship statues; we are totally devoted to them."
He said, "Can they hear you when you implore?
"Can they benefit you, or harm you?"
They said, "No; but we found our parents doing this."
He said, "Do you see these idols that you worship.
"You and your ancestors.
"I am against them, for I am devoted only to the Lord of the universe.
"The One who created me, and guided me.
"The One who feeds me and waters me.
"And when I get sick, He heals me.
"The One who puts me to death, then brings me back to life.
"The One who hopefully will forgive my sins on the Day of Judgment.
"My Lord, grant me wisdom, and include me with the righteous.
"Let the example I set for the future generations be a good one.
"Make me one of the inheritors of the blissful Paradise.
"And forgive my father, for he has gone astray.
"And do not forsake me on the Day of Resurrection."
Lets look at Kirlian photography first, from a skeptic scientis’s point of view. But before beginning, let me say that the complete text, web content and web addresses for the following citations will be given to you at the end of the khutba.
In 1939, Semyon Kirlian, a Russian, discovered by accident that if an object on a photographic plate is subjected to a high-voltage electric field, an image is created on the plate. The image looks like a colored halo or coronal discharge. This image is said to be a physical manifestation of the spiritual aura or "life force" which allegedly surrounds each living thing.
However, after a few experiments, scientists say:
Living things (like the commonly photographed fingers) are moist. When the electricity enters the living object, it produces an area of gas ionization around the photographed object, assuming moisture is present on the object. This moisture is transferred from the subject to the emulsion surface of the photographic film and causes an alternation of the electric charge pattern on the film. If a photograph is taken in a vacuum, where no ionized gas is present, no Kirlian image appears. If the Kirlian image were due to some paranormal fundamental living energy field, it should not disappear in a simple vacuum. [Hines]
There have even been claims of Kirlian photography being able to capture "phantom limbs", e.g., when a leaf is placed on the plate and then torn in half and "photographed", the whole leaf shows up in the picture. This is not due to paranormal forces, however, but to residues left from the initial impression made by the whole leaf or to fraud.
auras
An aura, according to New Age metaphysics, is a colored outline, or set of contiguous outlines, allegedly emanating from the surface of an object. In the New Age, even the lowly amoeba has an aura, as does the mosquito and every lump of goat dung. The aura supposedly reflects a supernatural energy field or life force that permeates all things. Human auras allegedly emerge from the chakras. Under ordinary circumstances, auras are only visible to certain people with a special psychic power. However, with a little bit of training, or with a special set of Aura Goggles with "pinacyanole bromide" filters (available at your local New Age Head Shop), anyone can see auras. You may also use Kirlian photography to capture auras on film.
On the other hand, you may also see auras if you have a migraine, a certain form of epilepsy or other visual system or brain disorder. Most aura training exercises involve staring at an object placed against a white background in a dimly lit room. What one sees is due to retinal fatigue and other natural perceptual processes, not the unleashing of hidden psychic powers. Something similar happens when you stare at certain colored or black and white patterns. Vision is not the verbatim recording of the outside world. When looking at a colored object, for example, the eye does not transmit to the brain a continuous series of duplicate impressions. The brain itself supplies much of the visual perception. In short, even if auras are perceived, that is not good evidence that there is an energy field in the physical or supernatural world corresponding to the perceptions.
The notion that auras reflect health is a common one among true believers.
For every other object of color we have scientific devices which can measure any energy emitted from the object, as well as the wavelengths of light reflected from the object. Even though equipment exists capable of measuring extremely minute energy levels, no one has ever detected an aura or the alleged energy that gives rise to an aura using scientific equipment. Human tissue is about a million times less sensitive than something like a PET scanner, yet we are supposed to believe that some special people can "see" what cannot otherwise be detected. Or we are supposed to believe that we all have the power to see auras but somehow we have repressed or never trained our psychic selves to unleash the power within.
Furthermore, the best aura reader in the West was tested before a live television audience and failed miserably, just as her sisters who claim to feel the energy radiating around every human body have failed to demonstrate the validity of therapeutic touch. The Berkeley Psychic Institute (BPI) sent their top aura reader for a chance to win $10,000 if she could prove her powers. She agreed that the devised test was a fair and accurate one. The test was televised on a program hosted by Bill Bixby. James Randi put up the $10,000. The psychic was presented with about twenty people on stage and was asked if she could see their auras. She said that she could see the auras and that they all had one and they emanated at least a foot or two above each person's head. The twenty aura-wearing people then went offstage. A curtain was lifted, revealing a number of partitions behind which only some of the twenty people were standing. Thus, Bixby and the psychic were looking at twenty partitions but only several of them had a person behind it. The psychic was asked if she could see any auras creeping up above the partitions. She said she could. To get her ten grand all she had to do was correctly identify each partition that had a person behind it. She was to do this by seeing each person's aura above the partition. The audience was given an aerial camera view of the proceeding. Well, the psychic claimed that she saw an aura above all the partitions and that there was a person behind each partition. The partitions were removed, revealing about 6 people behind the partitions.
Psychics only charge a few dollars and for the longest time I considered their activity a harmless parlor game. But now I feel I should put up posters near their booth saying, If you see auras, you may not be psychic; you may have a brain or vision disorder. See your physician ASAP.
I want to define some important terms before going further.
Empirical: Function: adjective
3 : capable of being verified or disproved by observation or experiment <empirical laws>
taken from: Merriam-Webster online dictionary
A pseudo science is set of ideas based on theories put forth as scientific
when they are not scientific. A theory is scientific if and only if it
explains a range of empirical phenomena and can be empirically tested
in some meaningful way. Scientific testing usually involves deducing
empirical predictions from the theory. To be meaningful, such
predictions must, at least in theory, be possible to be false. This quality
of scientific theories was called falsifiability by Karl Popper. A
pseudoscientific theory claims to be scientific, i.e., be falsifiable, but
either the theory is not really falsifiable or it has been falsified but its
adherents refuse to accept that the theory has been refuted.
Now let us look at the ETHER issue. The origin of ether is the following question :
Sound needs a medium (like air or water) to travel through. So what is the medium which carries light waves?
Sound and light are similar in several ways, but one difference between light and sound is that sound needs a medium to travel and light doesn't. Light can travel in a vacuum and sound can't. And a vacuum is a space that contains little or no matter. If you understand this, then you realize that light must not need a medium at all.
If you throw a rock in space, it keeps on going -- it doesn't need air or any medium to keep going. The same holds true for light.
In the 19th century and the early part of this century, scientists reasoned that there must be a medium associated with light that allowed it to travel through space, for example, between the sun and Earth. They called this hypothetical medium the ether. But no one could ever detect the ether. And then finally, Albert Einstein and others proved that the ether wasn't necessary at all. Light could travel in a total vacuum.
The Michelson-Morley Experiment
Is a simple experiment done to show that the ETHER doesn’t exists at all. Michelson received the Nobel Prize in 1907 for his work, the first American to receive the Prize in science.
This experiment is done to try to detect a difference in the speed of light in two different directions: parallel to, and perpendicular to, the motion of the Earth around the Sun. Much to his dismay, he found no difference. According to the ether hypothesis, light the speed of light depends on the velocity of the apparatus relative to the ether.
Moreinfo about this experiment can be found in the following web page.
http://www.drphysics.com/syllabus/M_M/M_M.html
Now we see what are the basic pseudo scientific claims on HOLISTIC HEALTH and their counter parts.
Let’s get a rest while I distribute one more paper to you. This paper contains the same data with the previous one. However the data on these papers are sorted according to another column of the matrix, i.e. life expectancy of humans in these countries.
I hope you will notice that the highest life expectancy of humans is in industrialized western countries. There may be myriads of reasons for that. However, there is no doubt that western medicine, the only medicine that seeks the AYAAT of GOD in the NATURE, is an effect on the higher expectancy.
And also I hope, you will notice that those countries like india and china are towards the bottom of the list. When we combine this statistical information in hand with the informal health systems of these countries, we will see that those countries, in which HOLISTIC HEALING practices are done are the worst among the list.
Japan, an industrialized country with a highly developed western medical system, is a glorious exception among other Far Eastern, mostly idol worshipping, countries.
Now, let us take a look at those HOLISTIC HEALTH approaches.
Reiki:
Reiki (pronounced ray-key) is a form of healing through manipulation of ki, the Japanese version of chi. Rei means spirit in Japanese, so reiki literally means spirit life force and may be understood as "spirit led by the life force."
Like their counterparts in traditional Chinese medicine who use acupuncture, as well as their counterparts in the West who use therapeutic touch (TT), the practitioners of reiki believe that health and disease are a matter of the life force being disrupted. Each believes that the universe is full of energy which cannot be detected by any scientific instruments but which can be felt and manipulated by special people who learn the tricks of the trade. Reiki healers differ from acupuncturists in that they do not try to unblock a person's ki but to channel the ki of the universe so that the person heals. The reiki master claims to be able to draw upon the energy of the universe and actually increase his or her own energy while performing a healing. Reiki healers claim to channel reiki into "diseased" individuals for "rebalancing." If the healing fails it is because the patient is resisting the healing energy.
Reiki is very popular among New Age spiritualists. It comes complete with "attunements," "harmonies," and "balances," plus it uses Sanskrit symbols. Reiki healers pay up to $10,000 to their masters to become masters themselves. The process involves going through several levels of attunement and learning which symbols to use, when to call up the universal life force, how to heal an emotional or spiritual illness, and how to heal someone who isn't present.
Reiki was popularized by Mikao Usui (1802-1883) who founded a religious movement in Japan in the late 19th century after hallucinating and hearing voices giving him "the keys to healing." He had fasted and meditated for several weeks before his revelations.
Larry Arnold and Sandra Nevins claim in The Reiki Handbook (1992) that reiki is useful for treating brain damage, cancer, diabetes and venereal diseases.
Places which teach reiki, such as Loving Touch Centers, are also likely to offer courses in aromatherapy, numerology, palmistry, reflexology, tarot, astrology, aura analysis, the cabala, crystal therapy, graphology, etc.
Now, what is that chi, anyway?
ch'i (qi)
Ch'i or qi (pronounced "chee" and henceforth spelled "chi") is the Chinese word used to describe "the natural energy of the Universe." This energy, though called "natural," is spiritual or supernatural, and is part of a metaphysical, not an empirical, belief system. Chi is thought to permeate all things, including the human body. Such metaphysical systems are generally referred to as types of vitalism. One of the key concepts related to chi is the concept of harmony. Trouble, whether in the universe or in the body, is a function of disharmony, of things being out of balance and in need of restoration to equilibrium.
Proponents claim to prove the existence and power of chi by healing people with acupuncture or chi kung (qi gong), by doing magic tricks such as breaking a chopstick with the edge of a piece of paper or resuscitating a "dead" fly, or by martial arts stunts like breaking a brick with a bare hand or foot. When examined under controlled conditions, however, the seemingly paranormal or supernatural feats of masters of chi turn out to be quite ordinary feats of magic, deception, or natural powers.
Vitalism is a popular philosophy in many cultures. Thus, chi has many counterparts: prana (India and therapeutic touch), ki (Japan); Wilhelm Reich's orgone, Mesmer's animal magnetism, Bergson's élan vital (vital force), to name just a few. The concept is very popular among New Age thinking, where it generally goes by the name of energy, though the concept bears no resemblance to the concept as used by physicists.
therapeutic touch
Therapeutic touch (TT) is soon to be offered in a hospital near you, if it is not already on their menu of "complementary" medicines. My sources tell me that the practice is the rage among Canadian nurses and it is becoming more popular in the United States, where alternative medicine is seen as a penumbral right emanating from the rights to free speech and miracles. I have no objection to a consenting adult taking any kind of medicine or treatment he or she wants. If a rational adult wants to fart at the sun at high noon to dissolve his tumors, let him. If he wants to pay some shaman from another planet to do the farting and howling, that's his business. But when he wants to use our tax dollars or insurance dollars to pay for it, then it becomes our business, too.
acupuncture
Acupuncture is a traditional Chinese medical technique for manipulating chi (ch'i or qi) in order to balance the opposing forces of yin and yang. Chi, an alleged "energy" which permeates all things, is believed to flow through the body along 14 main pathways called meridians. When yin and yang are in harmony, chi flows freely within the body and a person is healthy. When a person is sick, diseased, or injured it is believed that there is an obstruction of chi along one of the meridians. Acupuncture consists of inserting needles through particular points on the body, allegedly removing unhealthy obstructions of chi and thereby restoring the distribution of yin and yang. Sometimes the needles are twirled, heated, or even stimulated with weak electrical current, ultrasound or certain wavelengths of light. But no matter how it is done, scientific research over the past twenty years has failed to demonstrate that acupuncture is effective against any disease.
A variation of traditional acupuncture is called auriculotherapy or ear acupuncture. It is a method of diagnosis and treatment based on the unsubstantiated belief that the ear is the map of the bodily organs. A problem with an organ such as the liver is to be treated by sticking a needle into a certain point on the ear which is supposed to be the corresponding points for that organ. Similar notions about a part of the body being an organ map are held by iridologists (the iris is the map of the body) and reflexologists (the foot is the map of the body). A variation of auriculotherapy is staplepuncture, a method of treatment which puts staples at key points on the ear hoping to do such wonderful things as help people stop smoking. There is no supportive scientific evidence for any of these theories or practices.
Acupuncture has been used in China for more than 4,000 years to alleviate pain and cure disease. Traditional Chinese medicine is not based upon knowledge of modern physiology, biochemistry, nutrition, anatomy or any of the known mechanisms of healing. Nor is it based on knowledge of cell chemistry, blood circulation, nerve function, or the existence of hormones or other biochemical substances. There is no correlation between the meridians used in traditional Chinese medicine and the actual layout of the organs and nerves in the human body. The National Council for Reliable Health Information (NCRHI) notes that of the 46 medical journals published by the Chinese Medical Association, none of them is devoted to acupuncture or other traditional Chinese medical practices. (NCRHI was formerly known as The National Council Against Health Fraud, Inc. It is a private nonprofit, voluntary health agency that focuses upon health misinformation, fraud, and quackery as public health problems.) Nevertheless, it is estimated that somewhere between 10 and 15 million Americans spend approximately $500 million a year on acupuncture for everything from relieving pain to treating drug addiction to fighting AIDS.
The UCLA medical schools has one of the largest acupuncture training courses in the United States for licensed physicians. The 200-hour program teaches nearly 600 physicians a year. According to the American Academy of Medical Acupuncture, about 4,000 U.S. physicians have training in acupuncture.*
Despite a lack of scientific support, acupuncture is used in the treatment of depression, allergies, asthma, arthritis, bladder and kidney problems, constipation, diarrhea, colds, flu, bronchitis, dizziness, smoking, fatigue, gynecologic disorders, headaches, migraines, paralysis, high blood pressure, PMS, sciatica, sexual dysfunction, stress, stroke, tendonitis and vision problems. Thus, it seems that while China is moving forward in the scientific treatment of illness and disease, many in America and other parts of the world are moving backward, looking for metaphysical answers to their physical problems.
In March, 1996, the Federal Drug Administration (FDA) classified acupuncture needles as medical devices for general use by trained professionals. Until then, acupuncture needles had been classified as Class III medical devices, meaning their safety and usefulness was so uncertain that they could only be used in approved research projects. Because of that "experimental" status, many insurance companies, as well as Medicare and Medicaid, had refused to cover acupuncture. This new designation has meant both more practice of acupuncture and more research being done using needles. It also means that insurance companies may not be able to avoid covering useless or highly questionable acupuncture treatments for a variety of ailments. Nevertheless, Wayne B. Jonas, director of the Office of Alternative Medicine at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, MD, has said that the reclassification of acupuncture needles is "a very wise and logical decision". The Office of Alternative Medicine is very supportive (i.e. willing to spend good amounts of tax dollars) on new studies of the effectiveness of acupuncture. However, because of the nature of acupuncture, what will be tested in America and other western countries, will not be acupuncture, but something much more narrow. We will be testing the effectiveness of sticking needles into muscles. If doing this lowers blood pressure, for example, it will not be a validation of acupuncture because traditional Chinese acupuncture is not a scientific theory, but a metaphysical one. And metaphysical theories can't be empirically tested. How a physical needle affects a metaphysical entity such as chi is not likely to be addressed by those testing acupuncture. Of course, the positive side of this is that traditional acupuncture can't be disproved, either. There is a perfect harmony here between proof and disproof: each is impossible.
Perhaps the most frequently offered defense of acupuncture by its defenders in both the East and West is the pragmatic defense: acupuncture works! What does that really mean? It certainly does not mean that sticking needles into one's body opens up blocked chi. At most, it means that it relieves some medical burden. The NCAHF has issued a position paper which asserts that "Research during the past twenty years has failed to demonstrate that acupuncture is effective against any disease" and that "the perceived effects of acupuncture are probably due to a combination of expectation, suggestion, counter-irritation, operant conditioning, and other psychological mechanisms...." In short, most of the perceived beneficial effects of acupuncture are probably due to the power of suggestion and the placebo effect.
The most common claim of success by acupuncture advocates is in the area of pain control. Studies have shown that many acupuncture points are more richly supplied with nerve endings than are the surrounding skin areas. There is some research which indicates sticking needles into certain points affects the nervous system and stimulates the body's production of such natural painkilling chemicals as endorphins and enkephalins, and triggers the release of certain neural hormones including serotonin. Another theory suggests that acupuncture blocks the transmission of pain impulses from parts of the body to the central nervous system. These theories regarding chemical stimulation and blockage of nerve signals are empirically testable. They are couched in terms of the western scientific view of the body's anatomical and neurological system. Even here, however, most of the evidence for the effectiveness of acupuncture is identical to the majority of evidence we have for any so-called "alternative" health practice: it is mainly anecdotal. Unfortunately, for every anecdote of someone whose pain was relieved by acupuncture there is another anecdote of someone whose pain was not relieved by acupuncture. For some, the relief is real but short-lived. The treatment is akin to anesthesia. The patient has to be assisted with walking afterwards, driven home, feels good for awhile, and then the pain returns within a day or two. All we know for sure right now is that sticking needles in people at various traditional acupuncture points often seems to be effective in alleviating pain. However, most pain researchers agree that 30% to 35% of subjects' pain improves from suggestion or the placebo effect no matter what treatment is used.
There are other difficulties which face any study of pain. Not only is pain measurement entirely subjective, traditional acupuncturists evaluate success of treatment almost entirely subjectively, relying on their own observations and reports from patients, rather than objective laboratory tests. Furthermore, many individuals who swear by acupuncture (or therapeutic touch, reiki, iridology, meditation, mineral supplements, etc.) often make several changes in their lives at once, thereby making it difficult to isolate significant causal factors in a control study.
If control studies show that sticking needles into people really does help drug addicts or cure AIDS, will acupuncturists claim vindication? Will they say that chi flows along the same paths as the blood and nerve impulses, that there is a parallel universe to the physical one, a sort of pre-established harmony between chi/yin/yang and the physical body? Theoretically, whatever is demonstrated regarding the stimulation of endorphins, for example, may be claimed to be also due to chi, despite the uselessness and superfluousness of the theory. But what happens if it turns out that sticking needles into people doesn't lower high blood pressure or cure bronchitis? Will that be taken as proof that chi is a chimera?
Some of the acupuncture studies supported by the Office of Alternative Medicine at the National Institutes of Health try to mimic traditional control group studies, but no control study can test for the presence of chi, yin, yang or any other metaphysical entity. Some studies have been tried where patients were randomly divided into those who would receive treatment with acupuncture and those who would receive "sham acupuncture." The latter treatment consisted of acupuncture needles being inserted at the "wrong" points (i.e., not one of the 500 traditional points). It seems very unwise to compare people stuck with a needle in a "right" point versus a "wrong" point, unless you already know that sticking people can help alleviate pain and you are just trying to find the right place to stick them. The false point stickings were said to be analogous to a placebo treatment, but are they? If better results are achieved by sticking the traditional points, does that confirm traditional acupuncture? Of course not. What such a result would show is that after 4,000 years the Chinese had figured out the best places to stick to relieve pain, etc. But no such study will reveal if chi was unblocked or if yin and yang are in or out of harmony. Control studies using objective measurements of treatment success could determine, however, how much of the success of acupuncture is due to nothing more than subjective assessment by interested parties. Such studies could also determine whether any effects of acupuncture are short-term or long-term.
Finally, is any harm being done to people who are undergoing acupuncture? Well, besides those who are not being treated for diseases or injuries which modern medicine could treat effectively, there are some other risks. There have been some reports of lung and bladder punctures, some broken needles, and some allergic reactions to needles containing substances other than surgical steel. Acupuncture may be harmful to the fetus in early pregnancy since it may stimulate the production of adrenocorticotropic hormone (ACTH) and oxytocin which affect labor. Then of course, there is always the possibility of infection from unsterilized needles.
the placebo effect
The placebo effect is the measurable or observable effect on a person or group that has been given a placebo treatment.
A placebo is an inert substance, or "fake" surgery or therapy, used as a control in an experiment or given to a patient for its possible or probable beneficial effect. Why an inert substance, a so-called "sugar pill," or a fake surgery or therapy would be effective, is not completely known.
the psychological theory: it's all in your mind
Many believe the placebo effect is psychological, due to either a real effect caused by belief or to a subjective delusion. If I believe the pill will help, it will help. Or, my physical condition does not change but I feel like it has. For example, Irving Kirsch, a psychologist at the University of Connecticut, believes that the effectiveness of Prozac and similar drugs may be attributed almost entirely to the placebo effect. He and Guy Sapirstein analyzed 19 clinical trials of antidepressants and concluded that the expectation of improvement, not adjustments in brain chemistry, accounted for 75 percent of the drugs' effectiveness (Kirsch, 1998). "The critical factor," says Kirsch, "is our beliefs about what's going to happen to us. You don't have to rely on drugs to see profound transformation." In an earlier study, Sapirstein analyzed 39 studies, done between 1974 and 1995, of depressed patients treated with drugs, psychotherapy, or a combination of both. He found that 50 percent of the drug effect is due to the placebo response.
A person's beliefs and hopes about a treatment, combined with their suggestibility, may have a significant biochemical effect. We know that sensory experience and thoughts can effect neurochemistry and that the body's neurochemical system affects and is affected by other biochemical systems, including the hormonal and immune systems. Thus, it is consistent with current knowledge that a person's hopeful attitude and beliefs may be very important to their physical well-being and recovery from injury or illness.
However, it may be that much of the placebo effect is not a matter of mind over molecules, but of mind over behavior. A part of the behavior of a "sick" person is learned. So is part of the behavior of a person in pain. In short, there is a certain amount of role-playing by ill or hurt people. Role-playing is not the same as faking, of course. We are not talking about malingering here. The behavior of sick or injured persons is socially and culturally based to some extent. The placebo effect may be a measurement of changed behavior affected by a belief in the treatment. The changed behavior includes a change in attitude, in what one says about how one feels, and how one acts. It may also affect one's body chemistry.
The psychological explanation seems to be the one most commonly believed. Perhaps this is why many people are dismayed when they are told that the effective drug they are taking is a placebo. This makes them think that their problem is "all in their mind" and that there is really nothing wrong with them. Yet, there are too many studies which have found objective improvements in health from placebos to support the notion that the placebo effect is entirely psychological.
Doctors in one study successfully eliminated warts by painting them with a brightly colored, inert dye and promising patients the warts would be gone when the color wore off. In a study of asthmatics, researchers found that they could produce dilation of the airways by simply telling people they were inhaling a bronchiodilator, even when they weren't. Patients suffering pain after wisdom-tooth extraction got just as much relief from a fake application of ultrasound as from a real one, so long as both patient and therapist thought the machine was on. Fifty-two percent of the colitis patients treated with placebo in 11 different trials reported feeling better -- and 50 percent of the inflamed intestines actually looked better when assessed with a sigmoidoscope ("The Placebo Prescription" by Margaret Talbot, New York Times Magazine, January 9, 2000).*
It is unlikely that such effects are purely psychological. But it is not necessarily the case that the placebo is actually effective in such cases.
the nature-taking-its-course theory
Some believe that at least part of the placebo effect is due to an illness or injury taking its natural course. We often heal in time if we do nothing at all to treat an illness or injury. The placebo is sometimes mistakenly thought to be effective when, in fact, the body is spontaneously healing itself. And, of course, many disorders, pains and illnesses, wax and wane. What is measured as the placebo effect could be, in many cases, the measurement of natural regression.
However, spontaneous healing and spontaneous remission of disease cannot explain all the healing or improvement that takes place because of placebos, or because of active medications or treatments, for that matter. People who are given no treatment at all often do not do as well as those given placebos or real medicine and treatment.
the process-of-treatment theory
Another theory gaining popularity is that a process of treatment that involves showing attention, care, affection, etc., to the patient/subject, a process that is encouraging and hopeful, may itself trigger physical reactions in the body which promote healing. According to Dr. Walter A. Brown, a psychiatrist at Brown University,
there is certainly data that suggest that just being in the healing situation accomplishes something. Depressed patients who are merely put on a waiting list for treatment do not do as well as those given placebos. And -- this is very telling, I think -- when placebos are given for pain management, the course of pain relief follows what you would get with an active drug. The peak relief comes about an hour after it's administered, as it does with the real drug, and so on. If placebo analgesia was the equivalent of giving nothing, you'd expect a more random pattern ("The Placebo Prescription" by Margaret Talbot, New York Times Magazine, January 9, 2000).*
Dr. Brown and others believe that the placebo effect is mainly or purely physical and due to physical changes which promote healing or feeling better.
The physical changes are obviously not caused by the inert substance itself, so what is the explanatory mechanism for the placebo effect? Some think it is the process of administering it. It is thought that the touching, the caring, the attention, and other interpersonal communication that is part of the controlled study process (or the therapeutic setting), along with the hopefulness and encouragement provided by the experimenter/healer, affect the mood of the subject, which in turn triggers physical changes such as release of endorphins. The process reduces stress by providing hope or reducing uncertainty about what treatment to take or what the outcome will be. The reduction in stress prevents or slows down further harmful physical changes from occurring.
The process-of-treatment hypothesis would explain how inert homeopathic remedies and the questionable therapies of many "alternative" health practitioners are often effective or thought to be effective. It would also explain why pills or procedures used by traditional medicine work until they are shown to be worthless.
Forty years ago, a young Seattle cardiologist named Leonard Cobb conducted a unique trial of a procedure then commonly used for angina, in which doctors made small incisions in the chest and tied knots in two arteries to try to increase blood flow to the heart. It was a popular technique -- 90 percent of patients reported that it helped -- but when Cobb compared it with placebo surgery in which he made incisions but did not tie off the arteries, the sham operations proved just as successful. The procedure, known as internal mammary ligation, was soon abandoned ("The Placebo Prescription" by Margaret Talbot, New York Times Magazine, January 9, 2000).*
Of course, spontaneous healing or regression can also adequately explain why homeopathic remedies might appear to be effective. Whether the placebo effect is mainly psychological, or misunderstood spontaneous healing, or due to a process characterized by showing care and attention, or due to some combination of all three may not be known with complete confidence. But the powerful effect of the placebo is not in doubt.
It should be, however, according to Danish researchers Asbjorn Hrobjartsson and Peter C. Gotzsche. Their meta-study of 114 studies involving placebos found "little evidence in general that placebos had powerful clinical effects...[and]...compared with no treatment, placebo had no significant effect on binary outcomes, regardless of whether these outcomes were subjective or objective. For the trials with continuous outcomes, placebo had a beneficial effect, but the effect decreased with increasing sample size, indicating a possible bias related to the effects of small trials ("Is the Placebo Powerless? An Analysis of Clinical Trials Comparing Placebo with No Treatment," The New England Journal of Medicine, May 24, 2001 (Vol. 344, No. 21)."
According to Dr. Hrobjartsson, professor of medical philosophy and research methodology at University of Copenhagen,"The high levels of placebo effect which have been repeatedly reported in many articles, in our mind are the result of flawed research methodology."* This claim flies in the face of more than fifty years of research. At the very least, we can expect to see more and more rigorously designed research projects trying to disprove Hrobjartsson and Gotzsche.
the origin of the idea of placebo effectiveness in modern times
H. K. Beecher evaluated over two dozen studies and calculated that about one-third of those in the studies improved due to the placebo effect ("The Powerful Placebo," 1955). Other studies calculate the placebo effect as being even greater than Beecher claimed. For example, studies have shown that placebos are effective in 50 or 60 percent of subjects with certain conditions, e.g., "pain, depression, some heart ailments, gastric ulcers and other stomach complaints."* And, as effective as the new psychotropic drugs seem to be in the treatment of various brain disorders, some researchers maintain that there is not adequate evidence from studies to prove that the new drugs are more effective than placebos.
Placebos have even been shown to cause unpleasant side-effects. Dermatitis medicamentosa and angioneurotic edema have resulted from placebo therapy, according to Dodes. There are even reports of people becoming addicted to placebos.
alternative health practices
Health or medical practices are called "alternative" if they are based on untested, untraditional or unscientific principles, methods, treatments or knowledge. "Alternative" medicine is often based upon metaphysical beliefs and is frequently anti-scientific. Because truly "alternative" medical practices would be ones that are known to be equally or nearly equally effective, most "alternative" medical practices are not truly "alternative." If the "alternative" health practice is offered along with traditional medicine, it is referred to as "complementary" medicine.
It is estimated that "alternative" medicine is a $15 billion a year business. Traditionally, most insurance companies have not covered "alternative" medicine, but American Western Life Insurance Company is typical of a growing trend. It offers a network of about 300 providers in California, Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico and Utah specializing in acupuncture, aromatherapy, biofeedback, chiropractic, herbal medicine, massage, naturopathy, reflexology and yoga, among other therapies. Also, Mutual of Omaha Insurance Co. has reimbursed clients for the costs of a non-surgical "alternative" therapy for heart disease. Dr. Dean Ornish, an internist and director of the Preventive Medicine Research Institute in Sausalito, developed the therapy, which includes a vegetarian diet, meditation and exercise. Mutual of Omaha was quick to note that they were not opening the door to covering all forms of "alternative" therapies. They considered Dr. Ornish's treatment to have been proven to be effective.
The National Institutes of Health's Office of Alternative Medicine has supported a number of research studies of unorthodox cures, including the use of shark cartilage to treat cancer and the effectiveness of bee pollen in treating allergies. The most popular "alternative" therapies are relaxation techniques, chiropractic, herbal medicine and massage. Very few scientific studies are done by "alternative" practitioners. Indeed, many disdain science in favor of metaphysics, faith, and magical thinking.
On the other hand, many questionable products touted as cure-alls or as cures for serious illnesses such as cancer or heart disease are promoted with scientific gobbledygook and misrepresentation or falsification of scientific studies. Jodie Bernstein, Director of the FTC's Bureau of Consumer Protection, offers the following list of signs of quackery:
The product is advertised as a quick and effective cure-all for a wide range of ailments.
The promoters use words like scientific breakthrough, miraculous cure, exclusive product, secret ingredient or ancient remedy.
The text is written in "medicalese" - impressive-sounding terminology to disguise a lack of good science.
The promoter claims the government, the medical profession or research scientists have conspired to suppress the product.
The advertisement includes undocumented case histories claiming amazing results.
The product is advertised as available from only one source.
The general rule is "if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is."
Why is "alternative" health care so popular?
The New England Journal of Medicine reported on a study in January 1993 which showed that about one-third of American adults sought some sort of unorthodox therapy during the preceding year. Why is "alternative" health care [AHC] so popular? There are several reasons.
1. Drugs and surgery are not part of AHC. Fear of surgery and of the side effects of drugs alienate many people from traditional medicine. AHC is attractive because it does not offer these frightening types of treatments. Furthermore, traditional medicine often harms patients. AHC treatments are usually inherently less risky and less likely to cause direct harm.
2. Traditional medicine often fails to discover the cause of an illness or to relieve pain. This is true of AHC as well. But traditional practitioners are not as likely to express hopefulness when their medicine fails. "Alternative" practitioners often encourage their patients to be hopeful even when the situation is hopeless.
3. When traditional medicine does discover the cause of an illness, it often fails to offer treatment that is guaranteed to be successful. Again, AHC offers hope when traditional medicine can't offer a safe and sure cure.
4. AHC often uses "natural" remedies. Many people believe that what is natural is necessarily better and safer than what is artificial (such as pharmaceuticals). Just because something is natural does not mean that it is good, safe or healthy. There are many natural substances that are dangerous and harmful. There are also many natural products that are ineffective and of little or no value to one’s health and well-being.
5. AHC is often less expensive than traditional medicine. This fact has made "alternative" treatments attractive to Health Maintenance Organizations (HMOs) and to insurance companies, both of whom are coming to realize that it is cheaper and thus more profitable to offer "alternative" treatments.
6. AHC is often sanctioned by state governments, which license and regulate "alternative" practices and even protect "alternative" practitioners from attacks by the medical establishment.
7. Many doctors of traditional medicine treat diseases first and people secondly.
8. Many people apparently do not understand that traditional medicine has the same shortcomings as all other forms of human knowledge: it is fallible. It also is correctable.
9. "Alternative" therapies appeal to magical thinking.
10. The main reason people seek "alternative" health care, however, is because they think it "works." That is, they feel better, healthier, more vital, etc., after the treatment.
11. Finally, many advocates of "alternative" therapies refuse to admit failure. When comedian Pat Paulsen died while receiving "alternative" cancer therapy in Tijuana, Mexico, his daughter did not accept that the therapy was useless. Rather, she believed that the only reason her father died was because he had not sought the "alternative" therapy sooner. Such faith is common among those who are desperate and vulnerable, common traits among those who seek "alternative" therapies.
Since humans are scattered around the world, they have various beliefs. As a muslim I believe in the first prophet is Adam, and all religions currently exists today are somehow evolved forms of The God’s true religion.
Interaction between humans also resulted in the leaking of ideas from religion to religion. Also, I believe, forcefully conquering the parts of the world and rapid conversion of masses has a big effect on corruption of the religions, and also on the creation of new religions. I also believe that, this holistic healing issue as a corruption for Islam that should be avoided at all expenses.
Because, as Ibrahim said in his prayer :
Allah is the One , who cures me when I am sick.
This is even true for western medicine. Allah is the one who cures. We just pray The God for a healing when we take the medicine. Just another form of praying!
And applying those methods that cannot be scientifically proven nor can be falsified is a certain risk for our healths as well as integrity of our religious beliefs.
In the name of Allah, Most Gracious, Most Merciful.
Praise be to Allah, Lord of the universe.
Most Gracious, Most Merciful.
Master of the Day of Judgment.
You alone we worship; You alone we ask for help.
Guide us in the right path;
the path of those whom You blessed; not of those who have deserved wrath, nor of the strayers.
References:
CIA World Fact Book
http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/indexgeo.html
New England Skeptical Society
http://www.theness.com
Kirlian Photography
http://www.dcn.davis.ca.us/go/btcarrol/skeptic/kirlian.html
Parapsychology and related Topics
http://www.webpan.com/dsinclair/para.html#debunking
On Pseudo-Skepticism
http://www.anomalist.com/commentaries/pseudo.html
IN PURSUIT OF REALITY
http://www.angelfire.com/in2/manythings/page4.html
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http://www.earthsky.com/Features/Science-FAQ
Q&A to a Religious Leader
http://www.chinghai.com/AZscienceQA.html
Scientific American
http://www.sciam.com
Healing Touch International
http://www.healingtouch.net
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http://skepdic.com/contents.html
The difference between good science and Pseudo Science Rant
http://moondancer76.tripod.com/Rant_05_13_00.htm
Kirlian photography equipments etc.
http://www.kirlian.org
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http://www.reiki.com
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http://www.holistic.com
Nature Weekly Journal of Science
http://www.nature.com
Merriam-Webster online dictionary
http://www.m-w.com
