Dr. Bill Bengston on using energy for curing cancer in humans

Healing Humans

The eight hundred pound gorilla in the middle of the room is the question of whether any of this works on people ...

As I noted at the beginning, my experimental work grew out of clinical observations and my frustrations at not being able to isolate what works and why through clinical observation. Certainly people have been taught my techniques and applied them to people with some interesting anecdotal results. But to a researcher anecdotes are simply not enough. At what point will there be enough evidence to do a controlled study on people? I don’t think the question has a clear answer. While my passion is in the lab, I would certainly be open to some clinical trials. But in my experience watching human cancers being treated decades ago, my anecdotal clinical observation was that the most successful remissions were all associated with a lack of conventional treatments whose purpose was to kill cancer cells. When people speak of “complementary medicine,” perhaps the methods I am aware of are not really complementary to the current crop of conventional treatments. If that turns out to be so, then the difficulties of carrying out successful clinical trials are greatly compounded. I don’t yet know how to solve this problem. I do know that it is a problem worth pursuing.

This is excerpted from an article by Dr. William Bengston entitled "Breakthrough: Clues to Healing with Intention" in an e-journal called EdgeScience. If you are curious about some of the anecdotal evidence that exists for the Bengston method, read the early entries of this blog. We certainly would like to see the human clinical trials done that Dr. Bengston refers to, as we believe that the treatment of cancer through energy healing is a grail worth striving for.

Update on June 9th post

On June 9th I wrote about a little tyke we were asked to treat who was suffering from neuroblastoma. It is now four months later and the poor little guy has gone through hell and back, with five courses of aggressive chemo and surgery, with more to follow. The word had gone out that he needed help, and innumerable people have been praying for him and sending him healing energy.

Well, it turns out that with all the treatment he has been receiving, allopathic and alternative, his nasty tumour had shrunk by 97% prior to surgery. The incision surgeons needed to make was half the length they originally thought it would have to be and the surgery was hours shorter than they expected. I was originally concerned about using Bengston bioenergy to treat him because of Dr. Bengston's caveats about mixing his method with allopathic treatment, so I forwarded the call for help to the Therapeutic Touch network, and I've been told that a large number of other people have been using other methods to try and help, including straightforward prayer and Reiki.

The huge shrinkage in the tumour is great news, but I am sorry that he had to suffer as much as he did to get this far. His mom posts pictures of him regularly, and the change in him is heartbreaking. He is a little trooper, but his eyes tell the story of someone who has suffered greatly.

More practical challenges in using bioenergy to treat cancer

We have now seen this pattern several times, so it's worth mentioning. We treat someone with some kind of aggressive, scary cancer, and it seems to halt temporarily or significantly slow down, with the added side effect that the patient has a much improved (sometimes near normal) quality of life. Then the person decides to take a break from treatment because it doesn't seem necessary, or because they go on holidays, or the weather is inclement making driving difficult. During this break the cancer resurges. The patient then begins to doubt the efficacy of the treatment and quits for good. So in effect the patient quits because the treatment didn't work when we didn't do it. That's like saying aspirin doesn't work because your headache didn't go away when you didn't take it.

There is a kind of magical thinking applied to energy healing that is not applied to more orthodox therapies. The expectations are different: you will give your physiotherapist six to twelve weeks to fix your bad back or wonky knee, but if I can't fix it in one shot with a bioenergy therapy, you won't come back to see me the second time. Granted, cancer is a bit more complex. But people don't seem to appreciate the significance of a therapy that seems to halt it temporarily or to slow it down without the side effects of radiation or chemo, and gives the patient a decent quality of life and some extra time. The thinking seems to be that if you can't make it go away, the treatment is not worthwhile. At the same time, this thinking is not applied to the conventional therapies now being used, which more often than not give the patient extra time with decreased quality of life, and sometimes decreased quality of life with no extra time at all.

Why it's hard to know ...

This is why it's hard to know what works ...

I am treating someone who has lung cancer, using the Domancic Method because the person is also receiving chemotherapy and the use of the Bengston Method is contraindicated during conventional treatment. In addition to the chemo and the energy treatments, the patient is also receiving intravenous vitamin C. After one chemo session the tumours have shown sign of shrinkage. Both the Domancic treatments and the intravenous vitamin C were started not long before the chemo. So, what worked? To make matters even more interesting, the chemotherapy drug is an experimental one. So if the cancer remits, the experimental drug will be credited for the remission, and this case will form part of the statistical analysis. In the meantime, the patient feels good and has no significant side effects from the chemotherapy. Onwards and upwards, keeping the clinicians happy and the experimentalists confounded.

I think what we are doing here is called "integrated medicine".

UPDATE Nov. 17: Unfortunately the lack of significant side effects from chemo did not continue. After the second round of chemotherapy the patient developed pneumonia and I haven't heard anything more since then.

Oh the heartbreak ...

About two weeks ago we were told about a little boy with neuroblastoma who was about to start very aggressive chemotherapy treatment for a very aggressive cancer. We hoped to be able to treat him before he started chemo, but alas found out afterwards that he was already on day 4 of his chemotherapy treatment. Now he is 10 days post-chemo. His immune system has been completely wiped out, he has had a high fever for days, he has no appetite and he is in pain. And when he recovers from the effects of his first treatment, they plan to do the same thing to him five more times, followed by surgery, followed by radiation, followed by more chemo. And he is just a little tike, knee high to a grasshopper. His poor parents are beside themselves with anxiety and helplessness watching their little one going through this hell.

For me, this has been my first up-close encounter with the effects of chemotherapy. I am speechless. I cannot for the life of me understand how anyone can call this medicine. Who on earth decided that poisoning people is the best way of curing anything? Whatever happened to "first do no harm"? Why isn't medicine looking more closely at energy therapies like the Bengston Technique and the Domancic Method that claim to be able to cure cancer without causing the patient all this harm and suffering?

I wish we had been given a chance to treat the little guy before conventional medicine had a go at him. I know they mean well, but what they are doing to save him is just devastating.

Energy healing and the Catholic church -- or "the Pope butts his nose in"

Recently we were treating a patient with stage 4 cancer. We were recommended to him for our ability to control pain and improve quality of life. We treated him three times, and each time he signalled that he had obtained significant pain relief.The day after the third treatment he was stronger and far more alert than he had been since the first time we had seen him. Then suddenly a wall went up and we were told our services were no longer needed. No explanation was given. The turnabout was so sudden and unexpected that we wondered whether there had been some kind of intervention. We were aware that the patient had received bad news and we assume that the bad news was that he was terminal. We now take a leap of imagination and go on to wonder whether he then spoke to a priest and was then told that what we were doing to him was unchristian. This is a leap of imagination; we don't actually know that this is what happened. I just can't for the life of me understand why someone with terminal cancer would turn down the opportunity to feel better without a strong philosophical reason. And of course we have to respect patients' choices, whatever they may be. As a friend of mine said, we can't negotiate dying, but we can negotiate how we die, or rather how we live until the moment of dying.

It seems that the Catholic establishment has a wee bit of a problem with energy healing. It summarily ignores Christ saying to his apostles in the Bible "all this ye shall do and more" and questions where the healing comes from, attributing it to suspect or even possibly malevolent forces.

This is from the March 31 2009 issue of the Guardian:

Reiki, an alternative Japanese therapy with a growing band of followers in the west, is "unscientific" and "inappropriate" for use in Catholic institutions, according to America's bishops.

Guidelines issued by the committee on doctrine at the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops warn healthcare workers and chaplains that the therapy "lacks scientific credibility" and could expose people to "malevolent forces".

The document also claims that for a Catholic to believe in reiki presents "insurmountable problems".

Reiki means "universal life energy" and was developed by the theology professor Dr Mikao Usui at the turn of the 20th century, from Buddhist beliefs and Sanskrit teachings. The client lies on a couch, clothed and relaxing, while the therapist's hands rest lightly on the body in a special sequence. Clients often report heat and tingling sensations.

The church's guidelines state: "A Catholic who puts his or her trust in reiki would be operating in the realm of superstition, the no man's land that is neither faith nor science. Superstition corrupts one's worship of God by turning one's religious feeling and practice in a false direction."

The document goes on to state that since reiki therapy is incompatible with Christian teaching and scientific evidence, "it would be inappropriate" for Catholic institutions, such as healthcare facilities and retreat centres, or people representing the church, such as chaplains, to promote or provide support for it.

We should note at this point that the church's problem with Reiki is likely not lack of scientific evidence. It took the Vatican only 400 years to accept Galileo's scientific evidence that the Earth revolved around the Sun, so one could not exactly call the church a pillar of empirical scientific inquiry. It is amusing to read that worshippers who dabble in Reiki are engaging in superstition right after the warning that Reiki may expose them to "malevolent forces".

What we do is not specifically Reiki, but all energy therapies tend to be lumped under the heading "Reiki" by people who do not practice them. The problem seems to be that Reiki is "New Age" and "New Age" thinking is inappropriate for Catholics. (Click here for the Reiki response.) At any rate, this is the same church that is happy to let its people live in poverty or suffer from AIDS so long as they don't use condoms, so why should it be more humane about the manner of their dying? As I said to one of my colleagues, who was disappointed about the outcome of our treatment of this patient, we are lucky that the world has changed enough that "they" are not coming to cart us away to throw us on the pyre.

Bill's teacher speaks

This is from an article dated January 5, 1973, written by John Pascal and entitled "Cloud-Dissolver, Healer of the Sick". The name of the newspaper in which it appeared is not given on the clipping I have.

... Bennett Mayrick is a psychic healer. He has laid his hands on the suffering and cured or arrested, he says, arthritis, leukemia, lymphosarcoma, chronic back ailments, blindness, emotional disorders, blisters. Dogs bedeviled with respiratory ailments breathe easier. Cats condemned to death by cancer live on. His success rate is formidable -- 90 per cent, he says. "I am not the healer," he says. "The energy heals. I am its channel."

Mayrick is a tall, dark-haired, brooding man of 50 who chooses his words carefully. When he talks of his gift he seldom smiles. His eyes are mournful, reflecting what he genuinely conveys as a deep melancholy that the world is not availing itself more of his powers. The people he treats are friends, or friends of friends, but he would like to function within a formal structure. He has offered himself, he says, to doctors and to hospitals to work in laboratory situations so rigid they leave no room for doubt. "But they, the medical establishment, dismiss me.... And why? If medicine has failed, why not take a chance with me? What can they lose?"

... Mayrick is utterly sincere, utterly convinced of his healing powers, and he produces a shoebox packed with correspondence testifying to his successes. Moreover, a check with others who have witnessed Mayrick at work on one or two occasions affirms that cuts do indeed seem to heal themselves and blisters fade away after Mayrick has placed his hands on them. Is it a case of the mind responding to a powerful suggestion from an intense and charismatic personality? "Possibly," says Mayrick. "But how do you account for the cats and dogs I've healed?"

...Once, on a summer afternoon, Mayrick says, he was sitting by the side of a pool "looking at the sky, and I remembered reading somewhere that people could dissolve clouds. There were four or five low clouds over me, so I tried it and it worked. I'd pick one out, and watch it dissolve. I called my wife over and pointed to a cloud and said watch what happens. It dissolved. She said, 'Did you do that?' And I said, 'I think so.' Now I've done it so many times there's no question about it."

It was about a year ago, Mayrick says, that he began to cure people. Now he has all but given up the house-cleaning service he has operated for years, and devotes most of his time to healing. He charges no fee, but accepts "whatever people want to contribute."

"I'm here," he says. "I'm available. I want to be used more. The energy is all around us. It can't be destroyed. It can't be created. But it can be used by those who have the psychic power, and I'm one of them. Why, I can't say. I don't know. It may, in the end, be unknowable."

Bennett Mayrick died in 2004, aged 82, with his gift still unrecognized.

Also read: More about Bennett Mayrick?