especially callous display of showmanship, faith healer Peter Popoff at the end of some of his services urges the audience to throw away their medicines because they have been cured by “Doctor Jesus.” A shower of prescription and nonprescription bottles follows. How many of the largely elderly and poor members of Popoff’s audience go home to great pain, or even to die, because they have thrown away the medicine that is really treating their health problems?
Devout members of one well-known religious sect, the Christian Scientists, depend entirely on faith healers within the church, called
The bizarre practices of the Church of Christ, Scientist are also applied to children. Parents are forbidden to take their children, no matter how sick, to legitimate physicians, but must let them be treated solely by Christian Scientist practitioners. As might be expected, this has resulted in the deaths of Christian Scientist children from diseases that could have been treated, and the child’s life saved, had medical attention been provided. The Church of Christ, Scientist, along with many other fundamentalist sects and cults that believe in faith healing, argues that it is parents’ right to withhold legitimate medical treatment from their children and that they should not be prosecuted for child abuse when children die from the lack of such treatment (Swan 1983). In many states laws covering child abuse and neglect contain specific religious exemptions. These permit a parent to withhold medical treatment from a child if the parent is a member of a religious group that believes in the power of faith healing or in the power of prayer to heal. Such exemptions have resulted in the death of many children whose lives could have been saved by legitimate medical treatment. The Church of Christ, Scientist lobbies vigorously when attempts are made to eliminate such exemptions.
Responding to the serious issues raised by Swan (1983)—who was a Christian Scientist herself until one of her children died of a treatable meningitis at the hands of a Christian Science practitioner—Nathan Talbot, a church official, attempted to justify the church’s reliance on prayer. He stated that “the most important body of evidence concerning Christian Science healing is the ongoing published testimonies of healing in the denomination’s periodicals…” (Talbot 1983, p. 1642). Talbot claims that a few of these cures have been medically verified, but cites no specific examples.
THE ROLE OF SHRINES
Not only people but places have been alleged to produce miracle cures. The most famous is probably the shrine at Lourdes, France, where, according to popular legend, thousands of cures have taken place since 1858, when a teenage girl had a vision of the Virgin Mary at the site of the present shrine. Alleged miracle cures at Lourdes are now investigated by the Lourdes Medical Bureau. If the case warrants, it is then taken up by the International Medical Committee of Lourdes (IMCL), composed of Catholic doctors from each of the European countries that sends large numbers of pilgrims to Lourdes. If the IMCL decides that the case is medically inexplicable, it is up to the Roman Catholic Church to make the final judgment as to whether a miracle has taken place (Bernstein 1982; Dowling 1984). Out of the estimated 2 million sick who have traveled to Lourdes since 1858, the church has accepted sixty-four cures as miraculous. Nearly six thousand other cases in which individuals claimed to have been miraculously cured have been rejected. Since 1954, when the IMCL came into existence, thirteen cures have been accepted as miraculous (Dowling 1984).
A careful examination of the cases certified by the church in 1978 as miracle cures suggests that the medical evaluations of even the certified miracles leave much to be desired (Bernstein 1982). Serge Perrin was diagnosed as suffering from “recurring organic hemiplegia with ocular lesions, due to cerebral circulatory defects.” Bernstein concludes that “U.S. specialists agreed that if there were an organic illness at all, multiple sclerosis was a more likely possibility” (p. 134). Perrin’s symptoms were also consistent with a hysterical disorder, in which seemingly physical symptoms are due to psychological problems. Such disorders are frequently “cured” when the patient believes a treatment will be effective. The belief is the key; it does not matter whether the treatment is a real one or a placebo.
That Perrin may have had multiple sclerosis is an important point. Three other post-1954 certified miracle cures have been of multiple sclerosis. Dowling (1984) says that one of the criteria for acceptance of a case by the IMCL for further study, even before it has been decided whether to recommend the case to the church for final judgment, is “that the natural history of the disease precludes the possibility of spontaneous remission” (p. 635). But it has long been known that multiple sclerosis shows just such remissions. In his review of the literature on the disease McKhann (1982) states that “some patients have a…disease with inexorable progression. More common is the pattern of exacerbations and remissions followed by a decrease in exacerbations and the appearance of slow progression. Finally, some patients may have one or two episodes and then be symptom-free for many years” (p. 232). A follow-up study of multiple sclerosis patients showed that “75 percent of the patients were alive 25 years after the onset of the disease. Of these survivors, 55 percent are without significant disability” (Kurtzke 1968, cited in McKhann 1982, p. 232).
In 1963 a young woman was certified as having had a miraculous cure of Budd-Chiari syndrome, in which the veins of the liver become blocked. In 1970 she died of Budd-Chiari syndrome. According to Dowling (1984) the IMCL “concluded that when they reached their decision [that the woman had had a miracle cure] they were insufficiently aware of the natural history of Budd-Chiari syndrome and the possibility of natural remission” (p. 637). This shows admirable candor on the committee’s part, but this case, as well as that of Perrin and the other three “miraculous” multiple sclerosis cures, points to very poor investigations.
A major source of the fame of Lourdes is not the certified miracle cures but the thousands of personal reports of people who went there and “got better.” The shrine is lined with the discarded canes and crutches of those who could walk without them after their visit. However, the trip to Lourdes and the ceremonies performed there serve to build great excitement and hope in the pilgrims. Bernstein (1982) describes the “electricity in the air as the huge crowd [of pilgrims] moves from the bank of the river to the grand upper basilica, singing in unison” (p. 146). This is just the type of exciting and physiologically stressful stimulus that causes release of pain-reducing endorphins, as described earlier. Those who come to Lourdes finding it difficult—but not impossible—to walk with crutches or a cane will thus experience a reduction in their level of pain, perhaps enough to allow them to walk unaided, at least for a while. When the pain returns, the period of relative freedom from pain will be accepted as a miracle. After all, the biochemistry of pain reduction via endorphin release is far from common knowledge. The pain’s return will be explained as due to failure to pray enough, or to some other mystical cause. The French writer Anatole France made a telling and pungent comment upon visiting Lourdes in the late nineteenth century and seeing all the abandoned crutches and canes: “What, what, no wooden legs???”
There is apparently a brisk market in the United States for water from Lourdes. It is imported by the Lourdes Center in Boston. The center’s newsletter is filled with testimonials to the wonderful curative powers of the water: “For the past six years I was handicapped with a sore toenail; each spring I was obliged to have it lanced by the doctors…. I applied Lourdes water constantly [and] I now have a normal white nail and no infection,” or “My mother was delivered from cancer pain” (quoted in Bernstein 1982, p. 141). One need only remember the urine drinkers’ testimonials to marvel at the miraculous power of belief to make people see miracles where there are none.
Chapter 11
“ALTERNATIVE” MEDICINE
