A study of the effect of energy healing on in vitro tumor cell proliferation.
This study examined the effect of energy healing on in vitro tumor cell growth using the cell culture model similar to that embraced by oncologists to assess the effect of chemotherapeutic agents. After selecting an energy healer based on his ability to influence this model, we assessed the effects of energy treatment compared to cells left at ambient temperature and to a control treatment consisting of a medical student mimicking the healer. A chi-square test comparing a medical student's and the practitioner's ability to inhibit tumor cell growth by 15% associates our practitioner with inhibition of tumor cell proliferation (p = 0.02). We also found that the magnitude of change was too close to the assay's intrinsic margin of error, thus making our quantitative data difficult to interpret. Although energy healing appears to influence several indices of growth in in vitro tumor cell proliferation, these assays are limited in their ability to define and prove the existence of this phenomenon. More sensitive biological assays are needed for further study in this field.
Shah
S
S
Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, Missouri, USA. shahs@msnotes.wustl.edu
Ogden
A T
AT
Pettker
C M
CM
Raffo
A
A
Itescu
S
S
Oz
M C
MC
D000704:Analysis of Variance; D001943:Breast Neoplasms / Q000473:pathology; D002455:Cell Division; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007938:Leukemia / Q000473:pathology; D008297:Male; D008516:Medicine, Chinese Traditional; D008545:Melanoma / Q000473:pathology; D011471:Prostatic Neoplasms / Q000473:pathology; D014407:Tumor Cells, Cultured