Author: Ophelia Benson

  • Are You Right-on Enough to Teach Here?

    Which of your achievements in the area of equity for (____) gives you the most satisfaction?

  • Religion v Science Round 4,857

    Strident secularists, fanatical fundamentalists, Dawkins, Beattie, Reiss, Baggini, etc.

  • Maclean’s Wins ‘Hate Speech’ Case

    BC rights tribunal dismissed the case as did Ontario and Canadian HRC.

  • Responses to Sam Fleischacker’s Series

    ‘The alternative to ethnic nationalism is civic nationalism and a regime of equal rights for all citizens.’

  • Anthony Appiah at Philosophy Bites

    One on experiments in ethics, another on cosmopolitanism.

  • Stephen Law’s ‘The God Delusion’ Book Club

    Dawkins marshals empirical work on the evolutionary roots of morality to defend godless morality.

  • Jesus and Mo Solve the Problem of Evil

    Free will; appreciation; character formation; mystery. My shout.

  • Christians, Buddhist ‘Offended’ by Cartoon

    Cartoon seen as mockery of Pentecostals. (And Palin, and McCain, and God.)

  • Reiki “cannot do harm” – or can it?

    What would it be like to have world-class athletic ability, and to spend years of intensive training honing that ability, only to suddenly lose it all in the instant it takes your physician to utter a few words?

    Hayden Roulston, a professional cyclist from New Zealand, has experienced this. After several seasons competing for the top-flight professional teams Cofidis and United States Postal Service, Roulston was diagnosed with arrhythmogenic right ventricular dysplasia (ARVD), a rare and incurable heart disease known to cause sudden death in athletes. Notably, the prognosis is good for ARVD patients who refrain from exercise early in the course of the disease, which is why medical experts advise ARVD patients that they “should not do vigorous exercise.”[1]

    Exercise simply does not get more vigorous than professional cycling. World-class racers commonly compete in six-hour nonstop events that cover over 150 miles, and completing six or seven of these events in a week is not unusual. Cyclists can maintain heart rates above 150 bpm for hours at a time, and during the most intense periods of a race they will push their heart rates to exceed 190 bpm, close to physiological limits, for a chance to win. Clearly, professional cycling and ARVD are incompatible, and so, following his diagnosis, Roulston reluctantly retired from professional cycling in 2006.[2] He was only 25 years of age and, under normal circumstances, could have expected the best years of his career to be ahead of him.

    Not long after this, Roulston had a chance encounter in a pub[3] with a woman who claimed to practice “reiki”, an alternative medicine approach “based on the idea that there is a universal (or source) energy that supports the body’s innate healing abilities.” In reiki,

    the client lies down or sits comfortably, fully clothed. The practitioner’s hands are placed lightly on or just above the client’s body, palms down, using a series of 12 to 15 different hand positions. Each position is held for about 2 to 5 minutes, or until the practitioner feels that the flow of energy—experienced as sensations such as heat or tingling in the hands—has slowed or stopped… typically, the practitioner delivers at least four sessions of 30 to 90 minutes each.[4]

    The woman convinced Roulston that by doing this, she could cure his ARVD. Two months later, Roulston won New Zealand’s national road racing championship. Then, this summer, he capped his comeback when he took silver and bronze medals in cycling’s demanding pursuit events at the Beijing Olympics. “Reiki is the be-all and end-all for me,” says Roulston. It [ARVD] doesn’t even enter my mind now.”[5]

    This sequence of events raises a question. If Roulston’s condition was so easily cured by some hand positions that channel universal healing energy, why did Roulston have to meet the supposed savior of his career in a pub? Why didn’t his physicians prescribe reiki? One possibility, of course, is that they had never heard of reiki at all, and so could not have had any medical opinion, pro or con, regarding the practice. Or, more likely, they may have known enough about reiki to know that it has no medical effects whatsoever,[5] such that prescribing it to a patient with a potentially fatal disease would be irresponsible, dangerous, and a clear violation of medical ethics. Perhaps they went even further and recognized that reiki has no medical effects because the “universal energy” on which it is based cannot possibly exist, for if it did, it would have to do so in contradiction of the conservation of mass-energy principle, and that is as well supported by scientific evidence as practically any principle that we know.[6]

    So if reiki does not work – indeed, cannot work – how has Roulston managed to return to the top of his sport without a fatal result? Perhaps he was misdiagnosed, and never actually had ARVD. Or, possibly, Roulston did have ARVD previously, but has since experienced a spontaneous remission that is the result of natural bodily processes. Both of these possibilities are extremely unlikely given what we know about ARVD, but note that each of these is much more likely than the possibility that a person he met at the pub is in possession of magical curative knowledge and procedures that have been entirely missed by medical science. Ominously, though, the most likely explanation of all is that Roulston still has ARVD, but that it has not interacted with his strenuous training and competition to kill him. Yet.

    Proponents of reiki are quick to assert that it “cannot do harm.”[7] (Apparently the life force energy on which it is based, which is otherwise so willing to be called on and directed by reiki practitioners, somehow knows when it is being summoned to do evil, and refuses.) But what if undergoing reiki causes you to be deluded? What if it blinds you to medical evidence? What if it causes you to ignore sound medical advice such that you return to the most demanding aerobic sport in the world, despite the fact that doing so is likely to cause heart failure and sudden death?

    What if reiki, because it is nonsense, is only capable of doing harm?

    Roulston is contracted to race alongside the current Tour de France champion as a member of the newly formed Cervelo Test Team in 2009.[8]

    Christopher A. Moyer is an Assistant Professor of Psychology at University of Wisconsin-Stout, and a former competitive cyclist.

    References

    [1] Johns Hopkins Medicine. (2008). Arrhythmogenic right ventricular dysplasia: Q & A. (2008). Retrieved October 5, 2008.

    [2] Roulston retires for health reasons. (2006, August 31). Retrieved October 5, 2008.

    [3] Olympics: Hayden Roulston lone rider. Sunday Star Times. (2008, July 27). Retrieved October 5, 2008.

    [4] National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine. (2008, July). Reiki: An introduction. Retrieved October 5, 2008.

    [5] Jarvis, W. T. (1999). Reiki. Retrieved October 5, 2008, from National Council Against Health Fraud Web site.

    [6] Mook, D. (2004). Classic experiments in psychology. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press.

    [7] Allison, J. (2008). My journey with reiki healing. Retrieved October 5, 2008.

    [8] Hayden Roulston signs with Team Cervelo.
    (2008, October 2). Retrieved October 5, 2008.

  • Sudan to Chair Millennium Development Program

    With support of Group of 77, China, and the OIC, Sudan government is chosen to head anti-poverty program.

  • Vatican Rejects Proposed French Ambassador

    He’s gay. Previous candidate refused because he was divorced. Is France teasing Ratzinger?

  • Lead Prosecutor on Ayers and Obama

    Amazed and outraged that Obama is being linked to Ayers’s actions; pleased that Ayers is a good citizen.

  • Malalai Joya Receives Human Rights Award

    She publicly denounces war criminals, stands up for women’s rights, campaigns on behalf of rape victims.

  • Sarah Palin and Conservative ‘Feminism’

    Feminists are being challenged by national organizations that are antifeminist but claim to represent women’s interests.

  • Rolling Stone on the Make-believe Maverick

    ‘McCain has demonstrated an unwavering commitment to taking whatever position will advance his own career.’

  • Degradation

    You may (or may not) have noticed that I’ve been posting more parochial US-political stuff than usual, lately, and you may (or may not) have wondered why. I mostly ignored the subject in 2004, and during the endlessly long primary process from 2006 on; why have I stopped ignoring it now?

    Well, partly, frankly, just because I find Obama more interesting – more worth paying attention to – than any Dem candidate in decades. I think Obama is better than McCain on several dimensions – a better human being, a better candidate, a better potential president. A lot better. To that extent my posting could just reflect plain old political bias. But another part has to do with the flagrant dishonesty of the McCain-Palin campaign, which interests me. It interests me that Republicans pretty much always stoop to dishonesty, and Democrats don’t to the same extent.* Lots of Dems get angry at Dem campaigns because they don’t fight dirty enough. But – fighting dirty is a bad thing. The McCain-Palin campaign is a revolting spectacle. It interests me that there seems to be no braking mechanism, no floor, no point at which they just can’t stomach it any more. I realize they want to win, but I assume they also want to be able to live with themselves. Yet there is no floor. There is (as with good old Joe McCarthy) no shame.

    However that may be – the prosecutor’s letter to the Times is interesting.

    As the lead federal prosecutor of the Weathermen in the 1970s…I am amazed and outraged that Senator Barack Obama is being linked to William Ayers’s terrorist activities 40 years ago when Mr. Obama was, as he has noted, just a child. Although I dearly wanted to obtain convictions against all the Weathermen, including Bill Ayers, I am very pleased to learn that he has become a responsible citizen. Because Senator Obama recently served on a board of a charitable organization with Mr. Ayers cannot possibly link the senator to acts perpetrated by Mr. Ayers so many years ago.

    He didn’t put that last very well – he meant something like ‘the fact that Obama served etc cannot possibly link him etc’ – but we get the drift. There are two issues here. One, Ayers has changed; he is not the guy he was in 1968. Two, Obama was a child when Ayers was the guy he was in 1968. It’s just not morally respectable to ignore those two facts in order to pretend that Obama is now a fan of what Bill Ayers was in 1968.

    The thing is – I can perfectly well imagine conservatives and Republicans that I would disagree with but still respect. Well I should hope so – it’s not that hard! And it would be pretty absurd to be unable to respect anyone one disagreed with. But all the same, there it is; I can. But I can’t respect these people; it seems to me they have covered themselves in ordure. I find that interesting.

    *Do correct me if I’m wrong – seriously.

  • Christian ‘Boot Camp’ That ‘Cures’ Homosexuality

    ‘It makes more sense to listen to the God who created the Universe than to my puny human emotions.’

  • ‘Culture’ Minister: Libraries Should be Noisier

    Libraries not places for reading and thinking, libraries places ‘for families and joy and chatter.’

  • Eliminativism

    And another thing. That disdainful remark that ‘The word chatter might strike fear into the heart of traditionalists’ is worthy of Sarah Palin. It strikes fear into our hearts because we think libraries should be places where we can read and think and study. We think that is what they are for, and that that ability is and always has been a good thing. We don’t think removing it is doing anyone a favour. We think there should be places where people can play and make noise and places where they can be quiet and think. We don’t think all places should be like libraries, we just think libraries should be like libraries. Why do people like Burnham think all places should be anti-libraries? Why can’t we have more than one kind of thing? Why can’t we have noise and clatter in these places and quiet in those? Why do we have to eliminate quiet and thought and study?

  • More noise please

    Libraries are ‘out of touch’.

    Andy Burnham, the Secretary of State for Culture, will today launch a consultation on changing the face of libraries which he believes are out of touch…Noise bans will also be reviewed…”The popular public image of libraries as solemn and sombre places, patrolled by fearsome and formidable staff is decades out of date, but is nonetheless taken for granted by too many people,” he will say, adding that the sector would have to “think radical” to modernise.

    Too many for what? Why should the sector modernize? Why does Burnham (apparently) think it’s a bad thing that libraries are out of touch?

    If you ‘save’ or ‘preserve’ or ‘rescue’ libraries (or anything else) by turning them into their own opposites, then what is it that you have saved or preserved? What, in short, is the point? What is the point of modernizing or transforming or changing the face of libraries by turning them into something altogether different? Why not just forget all about libraries? It would surely be cheaper.

    In Camden, north London, the council will lift a ban on mobile phones in its libraries this month and users will be allowed to bring in snacks and drinks…A spokesman at the Department of Culture, Media and Sport said the Government wanted to transform the atmosphere of libraries to make them more similar to Waterstones stores.

    Why? Why not have two different kinds of things instead of just one thing? Or why not save public money by selling libraries to Waterstones and letting them make the former libraries more similar to Waterstones stores?

    [Burnham] suggested that the traditional “silence” in libraries be reviewed and opening hours extended. “Libraries should be a place for families and joy and chatter. The word chatter might strike fear into the heart of traditionalists but libraries should be social places that offer an antidote to the isolation of someone playing on the internet at home.”

    Why? Why should libraries be a place for families and joy and chatter? There are already lots of places for families and joy and chatter (also families and irritation and chatter). There are shops and community centers and sports facilities and parks and living rooms and gardens and stadiums and McDonalds – there are lots and lots of places. Why do libraries have to stop being what libraries are good at being and be something else instead, when the something else is already abundant and easy to find?

    The reason seems to be (at least I can’t think of any other) a vague background idea that libraries are a good thing and so people should be motivated to come into them. But the background idea that libraries are a good thing can’t have been thought about with any care, because the reason they are a good thing is that they provide things (books and a place to read and study and think about them) that are incompatible with motivating people to come into them by making them places where it is impossible to read and study and think about books. Do you see what I’m getting at here? You might as well try to motivate people to come into museums by filling them with mounds of rotting garbage. You might as well try to motivate people to go for hikes in the mountains by transforming the mountains into replicas of Las Vegas. You might as well try to motivate people to play tennis by removing the net and the boundary lines.

    My library would bring a smile of delight to the Secretary of State for ‘Culture.’ We’re way ahead of him here in Seattle. My library is very much a place for families and joy and chatter; what it’s not is a place where it’s possible to read or think or study. It’s a fucking zoo. It’s one big room, divided into areas but with no walls, so all the noise is freely available for the hearing. The children’s section (which is surrounded by adult books) provides toys as well as books, including wooden toys, which fill the air with clatter. Everyone talks in an unsubdued voice, and many people talk in a frankly loud one. Children run around screaming with gay abandon. It’s like a pleasantly-run summer camp; what it’s not like is a library.

    Everyone I know detests this situation, but we’ve all given up complaining about it. It’s official policy. This is all the more bizarre because there is a community center two blocks away, packed with recreational opportunities. Why the library too has to function as a day-care center and all-purpose rumpus room is beyond our understanding, but so it is. It is official policy. ‘Libraries should be social places.’