Terence Hines - Pseudoscience and the Paranormal

One point about faith healers cannot be overemphasized: They kill people.

Convinced that they are cured when they are not, patients may be dissuaded from seeking legitimate medical help that could save their lives. For example, many kinds of cancer are now treatable, if treatment begins early enough. However, the diagnosis of cancer still carries enormous emotional power and drives many people to seek out faith healers. Since cancer of many types can now be detected very early, well before patients suffer any serious symptoms, it is likely that they will come back from the faith healer relieved and “feeling better” since they have received the assurance that they are cured. Since the cancer has been “cured,” there is no need to go back to the physician—until the cancer, unaffected by the blandishments of the faith healer, grows to a point where it can no longer be ignored. A return to the doctor at this point will frequently bring a diagnosis of a now-untreatable cancer that could have been cured if treatment had been begun when the initial diagnosis was made. In an especially callous display of showmanship, faith healer Peter Popoff at the end of some of his services urges the audience to throw away their medicines because they have been cured by “Doctor Jesus.” A shower of prescription and nonprescription bottles follows. How many of the largely elderly and poor members of Popoff’s audience go home to great pain, or even to die, because they have thrown away the medicine that is really treating their health problems?

Devout members of one well-known religious sect, the Christian Scientists, depend entirely on faith healers within the church, called practitioners , for treatment of their illnesses. The practitioners’ training consists of a few weeks of religious instruction. The church teaches that disease and pain are “illusions” that are caused by medical diagnosis (Swan 1983). The practitioner is not permitted to engage in any sort of assistance to patients other than praying for them. Thus, the use of drugs, thermometers, and “even the simplest human measures for relieving suffering or discomfort, such as hot packs, ice packs, enemas, and back rubs” is forbidden (p. 1640). The practitioner’s praying may even be done over the telephone. Further, practitioners charge for their “services,” and the Internal Revenue Service has been persuaded that such charges can be deducted as medical expenses. Even more astonishingly, Blue Cross-Blue Shield in many states will reimburse such expenses.

The bizarre practices of the Church of Christ, Scientist are also applied to children. Parents are forbidden to take their children, no matter how sick, to legitimate physicians, but must let them be treated solely by Christian Scientist practitioners. As might be expected, this has resulted in the deaths of Christian Scientist children from diseases that could have been treated, and the child’s life saved, had medical attention been provided. The Church of Christ, Scientist, along with many other fundamentalist sects and cults that believe in faith healing, argues that it is parents’ right to withhold legitimate medical treatment from their children and that they should not be prosecuted for child abuse when children die from the lack of such treatment (Swan 1983). In many states laws covering child abuse and neglect contain specific religious exemptions. These permit a parent to withhold medical treatment from a child if the parent is a member of a religious group that believes in the power of faith healing or in the power of prayer to heal. Such exemptions have resulted in the death of many children whose lives could have been saved by legitimate medical treatment. The Church of Christ, Scientist lobbies vigorously when attempts are made to eliminate such exemptions.

Responding to the serious issues raised by Swan (1983)—who was a Christian Scientist herself until one of her children died of a treatable meningitis at the hands of a Christian Science practitioner—Nathan Talbot, a church official, attempted to justify the church’s reliance on prayer. He stated that “the most important body of evidence concerning Christian Science healing is the ongoing published testimonies of healing in the denomination’s periodicals…” (Talbot 1983, p. 1642). Talbot claims that a few of these cures have been medically verified, but cites no specific examples.

Not only people but places have been alleged to produce miracle cures. The most famous is probably the shrine at Lourdes, France, where, according to popular legend, thousands of cures have taken place since 1858, when a teenage girl had a vision of the Virgin Mary at the site of the present shrine. Alleged miracle cures at Lourdes are now investigated by the Lourdes Medical Bureau. If the case warrants, it is then taken up by the International Medical Committee of Lourdes (IMCL), composed of Catholic doctors from each of the European countries that sends large numbers of pilgrims to Lourdes. If the IMCL decides that the case is medically inexplicable, it is up to the Roman Catholic Church to make the final judgment as to whether a miracle has taken place (Bernstein 1982; Dowling 1984). Out of the estimated 2 million sick who have traveled to Lourdes since 1858, the church has accepted sixty-four cures as miraculous. Nearly six thousand other cases in which individuals claimed to have been miraculously cured have been rejected. Since 1954, when the IMCL came into existence, thirteen cures have been accepted as miraculous (Dowling 1984).

A careful examination of the cases certified by the church in 1978 as miracle cures suggests that the medical evaluations of even the certified miracles leave much to be desired (Bernstein 1982). Serge Perrin was diagnosed as suffering from “recurring organic hemiplegia with ocular lesions, due to cerebral circulatory defects.” Bernstein concludes that “U.S. specialists agreed that if there were an organic illness at all, multiple sclerosis was a more likely possibility” (p. 134). Perrin’s symptoms were also consistent with a hysterical disorder, in which seemingly physical symptoms are due to psychological problems. Such disorders are frequently “cured” when the patient believes a treatment will be effective. The belief is the key; it does not matter whether the treatment is a real one or a placebo.

That Perrin may have had multiple sclerosis is an important point. Three other post-1954 certified miracle cures have been of multiple sclerosis. Dowling (1984) says that one of the criteria for acceptance of a case by the IMCL for further study, even before it has been decided whether to recommend the case to the church for final judgment, is “that the natural history of the disease precludes the possibility of spontaneous remission” (p. 635). But it has long been known that multiple sclerosis shows just such remissions. In his review of the literature on the disease McKhann (1982) states that “some patients have a…disease with inexorable progression. More common is the pattern of exacerbations and remissions followed by a decrease in exacerbations and the appearance of slow progression. Finally, some patients may have one or two episodes and then be symptom-free for many years” (p. 232). A follow-up study of multiple sclerosis patients showed that “75 percent of the patients were alive 25 years after the onset of the disease. Of these survivors, 55 percent are without significant disability” (Kurtzke 1968, cited in McKhann 1982, p. 232).

In 1963 a young woman was certified as having had a miraculous cure of Budd-Chiari syndrome, in which the veins of the liver become blocked. In 1970 she died of Budd-Chiari syndrome. According to Dowling (1984) the IMCL “concluded that when they reached their decision [that the woman had had a miracle cure] they were insufficiently aware of the natural history of Budd-Chiari syndrome and the possibility of natural remission” (p. 637). This shows admirable candor on the committee’s part, but this case, as well as that of Perrin and the other three “miraculous” multiple sclerosis cures, points to very poor investigations.