--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "Xenophaneros Anartaxius" <anartaxius@...> wrote: > > Judy, now that I am briefly back from obligations I can take > a stab at this. I also scanned some of the more recent posts > and followed a couple of links. I would say on that basis that > this particular situation is more complicated than I originally > thought. If Skolnick is not the halo crowned saint, and is not > up front with his methods of getting information or presenting > it, then caution is required.
Yup. What did you originally think, if I may ask? > However my own experiences with the TMO also have that same > caution. If I wanted the truth about an event, I would not > trust them for an impartial account. Nor would I. However, they are not journalists working for the Journal of the American Medical Association. And for any situation > that involves lawyers, truth can be a very limited commodity. > > Now to go on to this post you dug up. I will go through it as > if I had not read what I mentioned above. > > --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "authfriend" <jstein@> wrote: > > > > --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "Xenophaneros Anartaxius" > > <anartaxius@> wrote: > > <snip> > > > As for Skolnick, I thought he approached his subject with > > > vigour and did not pull punches, but he seems to have > > > researched his attacks well. > > > > Let's just take a quick look at a bit of Skolnick's post- > > JAMA-article research efforts, as found in one of his > > early posts to alt.m.t: > > > > ----- > > From: aaskoln...@ (AASkolnick) > > Subject: Interesting Document Available > > Newsgroups: alt.meditation.transcendental > > Date: 7 Jan 1995 21:37:01 -0500 > > Message-ID: <3enj4d$b4j@> > > > > I just acquired a copy of the [Jane Doe's] death > > certificate. [Doe] appeared with Drs. Chopra and > > Lonsdorf on the Donahue Show, (the first show I think) > > and was introduced as "a former breast cancer patient." > > She claimed it was Maharishi Ayur-Veda treatments that > > cured her. She died of breast cancer on Dec. 30, 1990. > > I think the show was in 1989, but I could be mistaken. > > > Does anyone know the date that Donahue Show was taped > > or aired? Can anyone tell me any more about Ms. > > [Doe]. She lived in Fairfield and is listed as > > having worked as a meteologist/environmental researcher, > > so I suspect she was involved with MIU. > > > > If anyone would like a copy of the death certificate, > > please message me here with fax number, postal > > address, and phone number. Please provide your name > > also. I will not respond to requests from shadowy > > lurkers and people with mythological names. -- Andrew > > Skolnick > > ----- > > > > Now, Xeno, just based on the above post, could you describe > > briefly in your own words how this woman chose to have her > > cancer treated and why it resulted in her death? > > This seems to be a request for information. > > Skolnick has a death certificate of a woman that died of > breast cancer. > > The woman appeared on Donahue with Chopra and Londsdorf, > who perhaps are associated with Maharishi Ayur-Veda as > Skolnick reports the woman claimed she was cured by > Maharishi Ayur-Veda. It seems natural to link Chopra and > Londsdorf to Maharishi Ayur-Veda, otherwise would they be > on the show, and Skolnick is posting to a TM forum? That Lonsdorf and Chopra were MA-V advocates was a given; Skolnick assumed the folks he was addressing on alt.m.t knew they were both on the show to promote MA-V. He didn't need to specify. > The woman was said to have been introduced as a former breast > cancer patient. That implies she no longer has cancer. Donahue introduced her as "a cancer patient," and she corrected him, saying, "Former cancer patient." It was clear from what followed that she meant she was no longer undergoing treatment for cancer. > That implies she was 'cured', but normally a cancer patient > is said to be 'cancer free' up to the current moment. > > That she died of breast cancer, apparently about a year to up > to two years after the show (the show sometime in 1989 he > thinks, but he is not sure, the death at the end of 1990). > This Implies that any treatments she received for cancer > failed. The only implication that can be drawn about treatment > is that MAV would have been the treatment. These three paragraphs present the issues I wanted to get at. If you've read the other posts in this thread, you learned that (a) the woman did not claim to be "cured," she said she was "in remission," meaning, as you put it, "cancer free up to the current moment"; (b) she had undergone a full course of standard medical treatment for her cancer, including mastectomy and chemotherapy; (c) she received MA-V treatment not for the cancer but to mitigate the effects of the chemotherapy, while she was undergoing chemotherapy. None of this is conjecture or interpretation. It was all made explicit on the show. I can refer you to a transcript I made of the portions of the show involving this woman; I own a tape of the show, as did Skolnick (he confirmed that he had a tape in a later post). > Alternative medical treatments for cancer tend to be a > last resort thing for panicy patients, but there is not > mention of treatments except the implication that MAV is > involved. Right. And "last resort thing for panicky patients" doesn't apply, as noted. Why did Skolnick omit the very significant fact that she had standard medical treatment, giving the impression that she'd died because she used MA-V *instead*? Sadly, as is all too common, the medical treatment put her in remission but did not prevent a recurrence of the cancer a year or so later. She had been given a prognosis of three months without chemotherapy, so it did buy her a little time. She felt the MA-V treatments helped her get through the chemotherapy with minimal side effects. As I'm sure you're aware, anything that enables a patient to better tolerate chemotherapy, physically and mentally, is of significant benefit in the treatment of cancer, and it's not out of line to give it at least some of the credit for a positive outcome (which this was; a remission is considered positive regardless of a later recurrence). According to the woman, her oncologist--not an MA-V practitioner--was "amazed" that, among other things, her immune system remained robust during the chemotherapy. Often that is not the case, and immune system depression can result in nasty opportunistic infections that debilitate the patient in various ways. She said her oncologist felt that the better shape she was in physically and mentally, the more chance she'd have of beating the cancer, so she encouraged her to do the MA-V treatment. Of course her case is no more than anecdotal evidence for MA-V as an adjunctive treatment. But outstanding anecdotal evidence for a treatment's effectiveness can be the inspiration for clinical research to document results statistically. Anyway, bottom line, I think the discrepancies between Skolnick's post and the reality of the woman's case illustrates my contention that, as you put it, "caution is required" with regard to Skolnick's assertions. There is just no way to plausibly explain the discrepancies as unintentional; the attempted deception was calculated and deliberate. <snip> > > Also, what do you think of Skolnick's offer to send a copy > > of her death certificate to anyone who asked for it? > > He did not mention her name (or Judy redacted it here for > privacy, I cannot tell, not having seen the original post). He included it; I redacted it for privacy. Sal put it back in in one of her posts. <snip> > If he mentioned her name, this would be a bit more curious, > but people often have a morbid sense of curiosity. Which he invited them to indulge. > Journalists ideally have to be up front in their approach > to get information, but as investigators often know, they > can be stonewalled. So at this point, it is not possible > to tell if Skolnick is involved in some kind of subterfuge > in order to get the information he desires. Are you suggesting that he deliberately misrepresented her case in order to get more information about her? I find that implausible in the extreme. He certainly didn't suggest he was offering to send the birth certificate in return for information. And in any case, when he was confronted with the transcript, he stonewalled at great length, insisting there were no discrepancies, during several discussions, including some that took place a good while--years--after he made that post. > Investigative reporters sometimes have to go under cover. > If I were an investigative journalist, based on my > experiences with the TMO and its many different heads, I > would not feel that a direct appeal for information would > give the desired response. I would expect them to be > untruthful. I would be highly suspicious of the response, > I would want to verify from as many different sources as > possible. FYI, alt.m.t participants were a mix of TM proponents and TM critics. Skolnick's request for information would obviously have been addressed to the critics. He wouldn't have trusted information he received from proponents. And it's not at all clear why the information he wanted would have been important--the woman was clearly a sold- out TMer. I suspect he wanted it more for background, to add "verisimilitude," than to prove anything in particular about her. One thing is for sure--if he had reported her case accurately in that post, nobody would have understood why he was so interested. Not only that, he couldn't use the information he did have to make a case against MA-V in any context unless he misrepresented it as he did in the post. I said elsewhere that I had reason to believe he planned to use the death certificate as a "visual aid" in one of his invited talks to medical professionals about the "dangers" of alternative treatments. They would have been more baffled than anyone else at his use of this case for that purpose if he were to have described it accurately, because they well know how common such a case history is: a woman undergoes standard medical treatment for breast cancer, goes into remission, has a recurrence a year or so later, and dies. That she used some cockamamie alternative treatment to mitigate the chemotherapy side effects and thought it had helped is totally irrelevant. What I find especially despicable about the post and the offer to send out the death certificate is the tone of schadenfreude it conveys. <snip explanation of why Xeno doesn't think much of CAM) > I do not know what you have in response to this, but I am > willing to be surprised. I do not know what your thoughts > on CAM and MAV are, but if you are really gung-ho on CAM > and MAV, I would be suspect as to an emotional attachment > with the results of your reasoning. I find your "I am willing to be surprised" not a little insulting, given that you've just delivered yourself of a very negative opinion of CAM. Obviously your assumption is that I am uncritically gung-ho on CAM. And of course you've already made it clear that you think I'm run by my emotions. As it happens, my views on CAM and modern medicine are pretty nuanced. This post is long enough already, so I'm not going to go into them here. Maybe another time. Suffice it to say I'm neither as negative as you are about CAM nor as "gung-ho" about it as you suspect. With regard to MA-V in particular, I'd very much like to see it thoroughly studied by independent researchers, particularly as an adjunct to chemotherapy. My biggest gripe against Skolnick is that he has ensured, quite deliberately, that this is unlikely ever to happen. Modern medicine has not reached such a level of perfection that we can afford to allow any potentially beneficial treatment to go unexplored, especially on the basis of one person's personal bias against it.
