
Troubling examples of ‘pseudoscience’ at the Cleveland Clinic - seesomesense
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2017/01/11/doctor-questions-the-pseudoscience-of-the-cleveland-clinic/
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seesomesense
"The Cleveland Clinic also offers “Energy Medicine” therapy, described as
“practices [that] are based on the premise that by promoting balance and flow
in the body’s electromagnetic and subtle energies, health and well-being are
improved.” Among the conditions this supposedly treats, the hospital lists
multiple sclerosis and hormone imbalances. Similarly, its Center for
Integrative Medicine touts the benefits of reiki, a “hands-on natural healing”
technique that redirects “universal life force energy.” According to the
Cleveland Clinic, those benefits include enhancing the immune system and
improved tissue healing, and its practitioners treat patients with cancer,
Parkinson’s disease and other serious illnesses.

....I am all too aware of how frightening, exhausting, stressful and
dispiriting illness and hospitalization can be. I am broadly in favor of
hospitals offering a wide range of psychological, emotional and spiritual
supports. Though I do not subscribe to it myself, if reiki helps patients cope
with being sick, I’m not categorically opposed to it, any more than I would be
opposed to a visit from a chaplain or counselor.

But it crosses an extremely important, bright line to call that kind of
service “medicine,” or to ascribe a set of therapeutic benefits to it.
Describing the manipulation of energy fields as a kind of treatment moves from
evidence-based medicine into the realm of faith healing."

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chmaynard
Cleveland Clinic is also one of several institutions that jumped at the chance
to form a strategic alliance with Theranos:

[http://www.cleveland.com/healthfit/index.ssf/2016/05/clevela...](http://www.cleveland.com/healthfit/index.ssf/2016/05/cleveland_clinic_mum_on_details_of_alliance_with_embattled_blood-
testing_company_theranos_photos.html)

