Dr. Oz "gets it" from a colleague for promoting reiki

Dr. Oz gets it from a colleague in a blog chronicling "the miscellaneous ramblings of a surgeon/scientist on medicine, quackery, science, pseudoscience, history, and pseudohistory (and anything else that interests him)". I am including this for comic relief. The title is "Dr. Mehmet Oz: Gone completely over to the Dark Side". Here is a quote:

Dr. Oz's number one favorite "alternative medicine" treatment is reiki. That's right, reiki, which is at its core nothing more than faith healing without Christianity. It's the laying on of hands, nothing more, the only difference between reiki masters and Hinn or Popoff being that reiki is based on Eastern mysticism rather than Christian beliefs. Indeed, the founder of reiki, Dr. Usui, even "discovered" reiki after fasting and meditating on a mountain for 21 days in a story a lot like that of Jesus going into the wilderness for 40 days to pray and face temptation before coming back to start his ministry. Reiki is every bit as much quackery as the faith healing of Benny Hinn and Peter Popoff.

And Dr. Oz names it as his favorite alt-med modality. He even uses reiki masters in the operating room for his patients. Of course, I can't help but wonder where Dr. Oz gets the time to keep his operative skills up doing an hour long show five days a week or where he finds time even to see patients and operate any more. I also can't help but think he must have the most understanding surgical partners in the world, given that they must have to cover for him almost constantly while he's away doing shows, public appearances, and such.

Whatever the case, this sealed it for me. Dr. Oz is completely over on the Dark Side. I realize that he went over to the Dark Side a long time ago; I simply hadn't noticed that his journey to the Dark Side was complete. I thought there was still hope. Another thing that sealed it for me was a little discovery I made while researching this post. That discovery? Dr. Oz is married to a reiki master.

Sleeping with the enemy indeed.

Meeee-oooowwwww.

I'm finding it highly amusing that while the Vatican disapproves of reiki because it's "superstition" and could expose people to "malevolent" forces (as if being afraid of exposure to malevolent forces were not superstition par excellence), medicine from the other end disapproves of it because it defines it as Christian faith healing (= "quackery") without Christ. Kudos to Dr. Oz for being willing to stick his neck out and basing his opinion on reiki on what he sees with his own two eyes instead of ignorant, baseless prejudice.

Happy holidays, everyone.

Postscript: This one is funny too: "Oprah and Dr. Oz and spreading superstition at the speed of night".