they do not understand simple facts about disease. One such fact that plays into the hands of faith healers and quacks is that most diseases, even serious or terminal illnesses, show variability over time in how ill the patient feels and the severity of his symptoms. The patient with a terminal illness is ultimately going to die. But from day to day, week to week, and month to month, there can be large and irregular changes in how the patient feels and the severity of the symptoms. Sometimes the patient will feel better, other times worse, even though the overall course is downward. This is shown diagrammatically in figure 21.
Why is this variability so important? It means that, even though the overall course of a terminal illness is downward, it is possible to find two points in time, marked A and B in figure 18, between which the patient will think he has improved—he will feel better, for various reasons, even though the disease is still present and has not been cured. If the patient were to go to a faith healer at point A, he would very likely attribute his subjective improvement to the healer and give a glowing testimonial. A further point needs to be made here. When is an individual most likely to seek out some type of unorthodox treatment or cure? Unorthodox treatment is much more likely to be sought when the patient is feeling especially poor. Thus, the chances are great that, because of the variable nature of most diseases, the patient will perceive some improvement in the days following the unorthodox treatment. This has nothing to do with the treatment, but is simply due to the nature of the disease process itself. Nonetheless, the individual is quite likely to attribute the perceived improvement to the faith healer or quack. (Readers with some statistical training will recognize this effect as a type of regression to the mean.)
Two serious diseases that are extremely variable over time in the severity of their symptoms are multiple sclerosis and arthritis. Faith healers and quacks frequently claim to be able to cure these. McKhann (1982) in a review of the literature on multiple sclerosis, comments that “a striking feature of multiple sclerosis, particularly early in the course of the disease, is the degree of recovery patients can achieve during remissions” (p. 232). These remissions can last for months or years before symptoms reappear. Arthritis, a disease that often causes severe pain in a person’s joints, also shows great variation in the degree of pain the patient suffers. For years, copper bracelets have been a favorite quack cure for arthritis. In spite of the fact that the bracelets have absolutely no effect on the disease, testimonials abound, along with pseudoscientific double-talk used to promote the bracelets. Why did the patients provide the testimonials? Sufferers were much more likely to buy a bracelet when their pain was especially severe, so that ordinary measures, such as aspirin, would not be helpful. Thus, there was an excellent chance that, due to the temporally variable nature of arthritis pain, the pain would be less in the period following purchase of the bracelet. This would be incorrectly attributed to the bracelet, not to the nature of the disease.
Another important factor operates to convince people of the effectiveness of faith healing and quack cures, especially when the “cure” involves the removal or lessening of pain. This is known as the placebo effect. For decades it has been known that if a patient believes that a treatment is going to be effective at reducing pain, in about one-third of patients the treatment will actually cause a pain reduction. This occurs even though the pain is due to some actual organic process and the treatment consists of administering a totally inert substance, or placebo, such as sugar water (Melzack 1973).
As far as pain reduction is concerned, the placebo effect is now understood to be due to the release of endorphins, the same substances responsible for pain reduction caused by the physiological stress of excitement. The placebo effect for pain can be eliminated by giving subjects an injection of the drug naloxone (Gracely et al. 1983; Fields and Levine 1984). Naloxone blocks the analgesic effects of the endorphins (Watkins and Mayer 1982, 1986). It has also been shown that the release of endorphins in the placebo situation is a classically conditioned response that can be taught to rats (Watkins and Mayer 1982, 1986). This research demonstrates that the placebo effect is due to endorphin release. The placebo effect and the temporal variability of pain in any painful disease work together to produce a powerful illusion that a faith healer or a quack has effected a “cure.”
In addition to the temporary remissions and easing of symptoms seen in many diseases, in rare situations a disease may spontaneously disappear. This happens even in some types of cancer. Everson and Cole (1966) surveyed the world medical literature and found 170 well-documented cases of
Another factor that occasionally results in a seemingly miraculous cure of cancer is what is called
Most people who consult faith healers and quacks, as well as doctors, are not victims of terminal or chronic diseases. Instead, they have disorders of numerous types, from the flu to measles, that will disappear on their own, once the disease has run its course. The disease can either be sped on its way, or the unpleasant symptoms ameliorated, by proper treatment. But even if the doctor did nothing, about 75 percent of patients would get better on their own. Thus, most people with nonchronic and nonterminal diseases who go to faith healers and quacks will get better after their visit. This has nothing to do with the healer or quack, but is due to the time-limited nature of most diseases and the body’s own curative processes. The improvement, however, is often credited to the healer or quack.
FAITH HEALERS’ TECHNIQUES
Outright fraud and trickery are other tools of the faith healer. The last few decades have seen a rise in the number of popular healers who use a variety of tricks to con their audiences into believing that miracle cures are taking place right before the audience’s eyes and that the healer is in direct contact with God or Jesus.
Two notorious practitioners of this cruel con game are the Rev. W. V. Grant and the Rev. Peter Popoff. Both have been exposed as frauds (see Randi 1986a, 1986b, 1986c; and Kurtz 1986, for details). Randi’s book
Both Grant and Popoff, and other such healers, make use of a combination of cold reading, sleight of hand, and fraud in their performances. In May 1986 I played a small part in an investigation of faith healer W. V. Grant, spearheaded by magician James Randi. Grant gave a “service” at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in New York City and I, along with several others, went to see what we could find out. Randi had suggested that I volunteer when the call was made for volunteer ushers from the audience. I did so and, as an usher, had access to the backstage area and was able to wander about with considerable freedom during the performance.
We arrived at the Brooklyn Academy of Music well before the service was scheduled to start. During the healing portion of his services, Grant typically walked up to people in the audience, asked them to stand if they’re able, and announced their name, perhaps the name of their doctor, and what they were suffering from. How did Grant get this information? Our investigation confirmed what Randi (1986b) had reported earlier. Before the service started, members of Grant’s staff walked through the hall and chatted with those who arrived early. These people were actually being pumped for information, which is then reported to Grant. We saw, as did investigators at other Grant performances, that those who chatted with staff before the service started were quite likely to be called on to be “cured” later, during the service. When Grant was curing someone, he made a point of asking whether the person had ever spoken to him or to the individuals who assisted him during this part of the service. The person quite truthfully replied no. The response, although truthful, was misleading, as Grant knows, since the members of Grant’s staff that the person talked with were different from the assistants on stage with Grant when he did his healing. After attending one of Grant’s services in Florida, Randi found crib sheets listing information about people who were “cured” in the trash. It was also noted that one of Grant’s staff was using hand signals to let the reverend know what part of his victim’s body was afflicted.
