PART 2

> In the meantime, a lot of people suffer.
************
Yes, unfortunately.  Pain is inevitable, but suffering sometimes is a
choice.  When I can, I try to provide information to empower the patient to
help him or her make the best choice.  So that you understand a little
better about my prejudice in this matter, consider the major alternative
modalities in healing:
(1) Placebo effect is not the same as any other type of therapy.
(2) Placebo effect never has cured anyone.
(3) Placebo effect is always, at best, temporary.
(4) Placebo effect is governed by chance.
(5) Faith healing is not placebo nor scientific and a fee is never charged
nor asked for.
(6) Faith healing is only faith healing when it cures someone.  It is never
temporary.
(7) If faith healing is said to be temporary, it is placebo.  The use of
hope in the self-healing qualities of the human body and or in the
practioner is not to my understanding faith healing or placebo effect. For
me, faith haling must be the use of an outside spiritual power or entity
intervening on behalf of the patient and the belief of the patient in that
power or entity that they will intervene.  That power or entity is real and
not fantasy or imaginary.  Faith healing is best discussed under the
subject of Religion, Spirituality and or Theology.

Generating faith in the practioner is an indirect use of the principles
found in autogenic therapies and not the placebo effect, to my
understanding.  These principles are also used by sales and marketing
professionals and politicians.
(8) Meditation, hypnotism, autogenic training, relaxation techniques etc.
are not faith healing and are not the placebo effect.
(9) Some of the techniques used by practioners of all of the above MAY be
used in any of the above disciplines, but the foundational principles of
these 3 classes of therapy are different.
(10) The bottom line of nearly all objections to any of the above is money
coupled with the use of deception and manipulation that encourages the
patient not to be free to choose and the withholding of vital information
regarding diagnosis and prognosis.

I would supposed the greatest objections to the above would be aimed at
number "2" about cure from Placebo effects.  My understanding is very
narrow on this point.  If you write to me and say you were cured by the
Placebo effect, I would reply "Wonderful!" but I think that your cure was due
to something else, most likely found in faith healing or in the type
therapies mentioned above, or the placebo effect was in conjunction with
another therapy and the two or more combined brought the stated result.

From my analysis, the term 'placebo' originally had a neutral tone but
today it is definitely pejorative.  It is my hope that the term be dropped
and a term from the science of PNI or psychoneuroimmunology, one that more
accurately describes the process when the mind believes in the validity of
a specific modality to have curative effects, be used.  My present
understanding is that the term placebo describes a failure (temporary
positive results) of one or more of the therapeutic principles known to PNI.

I have taken the above (1)-(10) understanding from the result of working
with terminal patients within and outside of my family.  I have seen all of
the above and more applied to their illnesses. None have survived, some had
pain relief and some symptom remission.

It is my  belief (not proof, science etc) that for the health of the
practioner, the patient and the support person(s), these  classes of
therapy should not be blurred and not give equal authority with proven
scientific modalities, but seen as separate modalities.  To confuse them or
to suggest otherwise, does at least, a disservice to the patient and at
most, possible harm and even death.

In conclusion, this post is not an attack on any of the above therapies nor
the people who employ them, except  if their ethics reflect (10) above.  In
spite of my above beliefs, I still have hope that I would one day see
patients "cured" 100% for the remainder of their lives by any or all of the
above therapies, including Dr. Wilson's.