My friend was 29 when she found out she had cancer. It had started in her
pancreas and quickly spread everywhere: liver, lungs, lymph nodes, and womb.
Like almost anyone sentenced to death at 29, she looked around desperately for
some promise of hope. That promise came in the form of tong ren--a form of
alternative medicine developed recently by a self-professed healer named Tom
Tam. While every medical doctor told my friend that she had months or, at best,
a year to live, Tom Tam looked my friend in the eye and told her, "Stage
four cancer is no big deal." She believed him--and spent the last year of
her life sinking thousands of dollars into tong ren, in hopes that her disease
might actually be "no big deal."
When I talked to my friend on the
phone a month after her diagnosis--her voice pained and exhausted by the cancer
spreading so rapidly through her body--she explained to me how tong ren works.
In short, it involves a combination of voodoo-doll witchcraft and the sort of
"energy healing" used in acupuncture and reiki. As tong ren's
founder, Tom Tam, explains in deliberate pseudoscientific jargon on his website, his
patients use magnetic hammers to hit bronze dolls in the areas affected by illness. The patients
are instructed to strike the dolls at the acupuncture meridians that are
theoretically connected to their disease, and--through some form of presumed magic--the
healing effects are supposed to transfer to their own bodies.
"I'm a skeptic and a
scientist," my friend had said weakly to me about tong ren, "But I
promise you, it works. I can't explain it, but it works." It's no wonder
she felt that way. People in desperate situations will turn to absolutely
anything that promises relief from the pain of their disease and the terror of
dying young. Furthermore, almost any meditation technique that enables
relaxation has been proven to alleviate symptoms of pain and anxiety among
cancer patients. The ACS actually recommends meditation as an adjunct
treatment for cancer. I'm sure that the relief my friend got from tong ren was
very real--but I'm also sure she could have gotten it by meditating at home
instead of by paying thousands of dollars to hit a bronze voodoo doll with a
magnetic hammer.
Tom Tam sucked my friend's resources
dry as she lay dying of cancer. He told her not only that he could cure her
cancer, which was "no big deal" as long as she kept coming to
sessions, but also that he could use his voodoo-doll acupuncture to treat AIDS,
multiple sclerosis, obesity, depression, and thyroid disease, and more. He told
his "patients" that it could work for pets as well as people, and
that he had never seen a case in which tong ren didn't work--unless the patient
simply didn't have enough "intent" or faith when whacking voodoo
dolls with hammers. While I'm sure that tong ren has helped many vey sick
people cope with depression, anxiety, helplessness, and pain--in the way that
any form of meditation can--I find it sickening, and even criminal, that he
actually claimed his techniques could cure terminal diseases.
Not surprisingly, there isn't a
single scientific, rational study examining the effects of tong ren. No
placebo-controlled clinical trials, no well-documented case reports, no
double-blind tests, no vivisection of animals. Instead, Tom Tam's
"evidence" that tong ren works lies in his dedicated followers. They
fall, almost unanimously, to confirmation bias: patients who were told they
have three months to live determined, after living four months, that tong ren was
the reason. Patients who experienced predictable pain relief from the
meditative effects of tong ren attributed it to the technique itself, rather
than the relaxation and peace of mind it offered. These testimonials have drawn
hundreds of new patients to tong ren, where they dish out thousands of dollars
for a form of "medicine" so laughably implausible that only the
desperately ill would take it seriously.
My friend put up a very brave fight
against her cancer. She went through chemotherapy three times. She drank human
breast milk to support her body's defenses against cancer. She ate a strict
macrobiotic diet. She exercised as much as her body could possibly allow it.
She used a variety of herbal supplements that her doctor approved. But, a year
after her diagnosis, she surrendered to cancer. Her mother sang her to sleep
and her sister held her hand as she passed away at thirty years of age. The
disease, which Tom Tam had so flippantly said was "no big deal,"
claimed her life.
I know that my friend's life was
prolonged by her use of complementary alternative medicine. The ginger she used
to cope with chemotherapy-related nausea likely helped, according to the ACS. Macrobiotic diets and exercise have long been known to boost defenses against
cancer. And, of course, the meditation involved in tong ren was likely useful,
too. I don't oppose complementary medicine, but I do oppose Tom Tam's crude,
quacky, and exploitative insistence on promoting a method with no scientific
basis. There is no reason to believe that tong ren can cure any disease. Anyone
seeking complementary treatment for cancer should avoid Tom Tam's techniques
and instead seek help from more reputable practitioners.
I've had traditional Chinese acupuncture. But it was TRADITIONAL as in I had doctors who studied it in CHINA for many years. I had it in a communist country where, I guess maybe some 'cross pollination' programs with China. It differs VASTLY from 'capitalist' acupuncture where one goes ONE time a week in a PRIVATE room. The protocol was 5X/week where MANY patients were spaced about 20 minutes apart and separated just by curtains. Also involved EKGS before and after and devices to actually measure the electricity going through you.
ReplyDeleteIt's not really something based on 'belief' or placebo effect. There is a science to it which they learn in CHINA and it works best when the protocol TAUGHT in China is followed which is basically 5 treatments/week for 1 month. In my case, I did not seek out acupuncture or have any 'beliefs' in it, I was SENT (by the state sanatorium for nervous conditions) to a LEGIT doctor who practiced acupuncture in addition to other 'electrical therapies'. It WORKED. People not even knowing I had it would comment that I looked so much healthier.
That said, what you are getting in the US is a lot of practitioners who DEPEND on your BELIEVING in it BUT they DON'T use the protocols used in China in which it really works. I've had it in the US and it does not do much. Not to the extent it worked with LEGIT traditional practice of it.
That said, this Tam tom guy or what ever his name is DEPENDS on people to BELIEVE in it, in which case, it works by PLACEBO effect or aka 'faith healing'. VOODOO also works on placebo effect but negatively so where the belief is that HARM will be done.
I have a quack PCP who has practiced this stuff on my WITHOUT MY CONSENT and despite my protests of this is placebo effect, her claim is 'placebos work'.
So, what you now have is a lot of INCOMPETENT doctors depending on the BELIEFS of patients who use this bullshit modality.
Please contact me domenicag@msn.com. This man needs to be stopped
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