Help debunk the claim that QiGong heals cancer

[TruthSeeker]

A colleague is using the following video to support the claim that QiGong heals cancer by almost immediately shrinking tumours.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uGIN0G9JFss


The "healing" begins at about 2:20.

I am hopeful that this video and the associated claims have been thoroughly debunked. But I'm having some trouble finding the documentation.

This same colleague uses Luke Chang, author of "101 Miracles of Natural Healing" as the source for his information.

When challenged regarding the role of expectations/placebo etc, he promised to provide rat studies also documenting the effects. Anyone know about those studies?

Thanks so much for any help and links you can give!

TS

[fls]

A colleague is using the following video to support the claim that QiGong heals cancer by almost immediately shrinking tumours.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uGIN0G9JFss


The "healing" begins at about 2:20.

I am hopeful that this video and the associated claims have been thoroughly debunked. But I'm having some trouble finding the documentation.

This same colleague uses Luke Chang, author of "101 Miracles of Natural Healing" as the source for his information.

When challenged regarding the role of expectations/placebo etc, he promised to provide rat studies also documenting the effects. Anyone know about those studies?

Thanks so much for any help and links you can give!

TS

I'm not sure that there's anything to debunk in that video. There's not enough information given to indicate that anything at all unusual happened. We do expect people to feel better when participating in these sorts of activities. And MS is characterized by regression of the lesions, so no specific effects from QiGong are necessary to explain the results. It's pretty easy to make a tumour disappear on ultrasound - all it requires is a slight shift in the angle since all you are looking at is a single plane.

If your colleague is seriously referring to that video as evidence, it doesn't sound like he is interested in knowing whether or not he is wrong. And in that case, debunking probably won't have any effect on his belief.

Linda

[TruthSeeker]

Hi Linda,
Thanks for your response.

I agree with what you have said. I was hoping to find a link to something very similar - basically saying we can't draw any conclusions from the video as presented and perhaps showing how easy it is to recreate the US effects (Without recourse to any paranormal intervention)

I am not so concerned with changing my colleague's mind. He is probably far too entrenched for that. My concern is that he is showing this video to our students as evidence for the effectiveness of QiGong. I was only told about it when by coincidence I gave a class debunking therapeutic touch the very next day. Most of the students were skeptical of the QiGong cure, and I think our discussion in class helped clarify for those who weren't. But a nice demonstration would be the icing on the cake :)

[jli]

It's pretty easy to make a tumour disappear on ultrasound - all it requires is a slight shift in the angle since all you are looking at is a single plane.


I think this is exactly what is happening. Instead of looking at the tumor, try to watch what is going on on the left side of the live ultrasound video. The change is very subbtle but definitely there, suggesting a shift of angle. This is kind of like a magic show on televison where some large structure dissapears right before the viewers eye. This I am only guessing as I´m not a magician (or radiologist for that matter). Didn´t Penn and Teller once demonstrate this on a television show??. If not it should be fairly straight forward to reproduce the effect of shifted camera angle and show this to the students :cool:

[fls]

Hi Linda,
Thanks for your response.

I agree with what you have said. I was hoping to find a link to something very similar - basically saying we can't draw any conclusions from the video as presented and perhaps showing how easy it is to recreate the US effects (Without recourse to any paranormal intervention)

I am not so concerned with changing my colleague's mind. He is probably far too entrenched for that. My concern is that he is showing this video to our students as evidence for the effectiveness of QiGong. I was only told about it when by coincidence I gave a class debunking therapeutic touch the very next day. Most of the students were skeptical of the QiGong cure, and I think our discussion in class helped clarify for those who weren't. But a nice demonstration would be the icing on the cake :)

I looked around a little. I didn't find a video of someone pretending to make a tumour disappear. But any US video demonstrates how things pop in and out the picture. Here is an example.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RnTMpaKRYog&feature=related

The ultrasound picture is a cross-section and very slightly changing the angle of the probe on the skin, without moving the probe, will gradually move an object out of the picture. As Jli has pointed out, if you focus on the edges and ignore the 'tumour', you can see changes away from the tumour as well. The changes should be greater the further away you get from the probe (which is at the apex or top of the picture).

At least he gave you an opportunity to teach critical thinking...

Linda

[Tristan Chi]

Some years ago, my sister got colon cancer.
Quite soon it became apparent that no medical treatment worked.
She was advised to try QiGong, which she did with considerable enthusiasm and stamina.
Six months later she was dead.

There. Debunked.

[TruthSeeker]

My colleague has countered that the evidence (ie, double blind RCTs) exists but is only available in Chinese. I suggested that an effective treatment - something as earth shattering as almost instantaneous healing of cancer - would be accepted for publication in a major English journal like "Science" if it were demonstrated using high quality research methods and, even if it were published in Chinese, word would spread. The world is small and interconnected and knowledge like that would be disseminated quickly. Why do we know about other advances in medicine and science being made in China but not this?

I also pre-emptively addressed a couple of other potential arguments:


1. QiGong isn't amenable to RCT's. We discussed whether different standards of evidence make sense and what it means if a treatment doesn't work when the conditions are controlled, the practitioners and/or patients blinded, the person's illness verified and progressive and appropriate follow-ups used.

Also, I challenged them to consider what would happen if the treatment worked but not under "scientific" conditions. There would be hundreds and hundreds of patients cured every day. They would be vocal about their cures - going to newspapers, writing blogs etc.

2. I addressed the claim that mainstream scientists and health care workers are suppressing the cure for cancer because we don't want to be out of jobs :)


The students responded well. We shall see what happens next.

I'm pleased to have the US video. Thank you, Linda, for finding it. I asked the students to look into the more usual methods of measuring tumor and disease progression and then to see if Qigong has any effect on these.

Tristan, I am very sorry for your loss.

[jli]

My colleague has countered that the evidence (ie, double blind RCTs) exists but is only available in Chinese.


May I suggest that you confront him (and the students) with this http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17653892?ordinalpos=3&itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsP anel.Pubmed_RVDocSum recent review of controlled clinical trials on Qigong "treatment" of cancer.