Rating: 
Summary: Correction
Review: On the review I submitted earlier today, please change the response to the query, "Where in the world are you?" to "San Francisco, California." Thank you.
Rating:
Summary: Correction
Review: On the review I submitted earlier today, please change the response to the query, "Where in the world are you?" to "San Francisco, California." Thank you.
Rating:
Summary: Thoughtful advocacy for "healing intent"
Review: This thoughtful, well-researched and well-written book focuses on two major ideas. The first is the theory that there is a universal consciousness, infinite in space and time, which the author calls "nonlocal mind." He reviews a wide range of past and current thought on this topic, as well as research studies that appear to illustrate various effects of nonlocal mind, such as action-at-a- distance, mind-to-mind communication, etc. He points out that, while no one knows how nonlocal mind works, the same is true of gravity. (Still, unlike gravity, there are as yet no quantitative "laws" describing the actions of nonlocal mind.) The second major idea is that healing and destruction of harmful cells may be achieved through prayer or healing intent, by oneself or by others. The author describes a number of clinical trials of intercessory prayer/healing intent (i.e. by others), either completed or in progress. However, the reviewer believes that a more systematic examination of such studies is needed, such as a meta-analysis, to avoid unconscious bias in selection of studies as well as the effects of "publication bias." In conclusion, the author offers a benign vision of the future of medicine in which nonlocal methods (psychic perception of symptoms, healing intent) are seamlessly blended with more traditional approaches. While the possible abuses of these ideas are only minimally addressed, this is an impressive achievement and a useful overview of an increasingly important development in medical practice.
Rating: 
Summary: More of the same moon-eyed junk.
Review: Yet another book that regurgitates the same badly-managed studies about qi gong, acupuncture, and prayer. About five of these come out every year, and this one's no different. The prayer study, for instance, had no control group; acupuncture has never been clinically shown to have any effect on disease, and only a slight effect on pain management (possibly due to a mild release of endorphins); and so on. It's all the same junk. There's no question that HMOs and doctor-patient relationships are bad. Part of the reason people feel subjectively better when tended to by an "alternative" doctor is because of the length and quality of the attention, and has nothing to do with the "healing" itself. Let's do something about the crummy doctor-patient system, so that people won't turn to out-and-out quackery and unscientific nonsense to feel like they're getting medical attention.
| 
