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jmcginn
Skeptic Friend

343 Posts

Posted - 11/01/2002 :  12:58:01  Show Profile  Visit jmcginn's Homepage Send jmcginn a Private Message
Ok I am currently going back to school to eventually change careers from a software engineer to a physical anthropologists. Right now I am currently taking some of my needed core classes at a local community college, while taking an anthropology course at Colorado U at Boulder.

I was looking through the community college's catalog and came across a list of course descriptions under the dubious title "Holistic Health".

Here are a few of the crap courses being taught:

quote:
HHP 102 TOUCH FOR CAREGIVERS (.5)
Touch therapy is an important aspect of caring for the whole
person. This class introduces concepts related to basic massage
and energy work. These techniques can be quickly learned and
applied to interactions with clients, family, and friends. They are
readily incorporated by care givers in long term, home health,
hospice, and acute care situations
. 8 Contact Hours.


quote:
HHP 130 FIRST DEGREE REIKI (1)
This course explores the traditional Usui use of Reiki. The
history and development of Reiki work is reviewed, beginning in
Japan, then Hawaii, the United States, and later Europe.
Discussion of the fundamental beliefs and the dynamics of the
Reiki process are included. Each participant receives Reiki attunements
in this course to prepare for the Reiki energy work. Each
class member gives and receives a Reiki hands-on treatment
session. 15 Contact Hours.


quote:
HHP 242 HEALING TOUCH LEVEL I (1)
Healing touch is a type of alternative healing using hands-on
and energy based techniques to balance and align the human
energy field. The art of healing touch is related to a variety of belief
systems including the scientific method
, holistic health, parapsychology,
and other healing modalities. This course provides a
historical overview of healing-through-touch. Students learn to
develop and use touch as a means of assessing and enhancing
wellness. 15 Contact Hours.


(Emphasis mine, what a load of crap)

quote:
HHP 150 INTERSPECIES COMMUNICATION (1)
This course explores interspecies communication as a means of
listening deeply to what the animals want to relate to people and
speaking back in a way they can understand. Interspecies communication
can be applied to a number of situations including: healing
emotional issues, for both animals and people; uncovering root
causes of disease; supporting an animal's death process; helping
people choose new pets and bringing harmony into relationships
between people and their pets. 15 Contact Hours.


And there are more such as:
HHP 144 THERAPEUTIC APPLICATION OF THE HUMAN ANIMAL BOND (1)
HHP 243 HEALING TOUCH LEVEL II (2)
HHP 152 ANIMAL MASSAGE (1)
HHP 205 HERBOLOGY (.5)
HHP 223 JIN SHIN LEVEL I (2)
HHP 242 HEALING TOUCH LEVEL I (1)
HHP 243 HEALING TOUCH LEVEL II (2)
HHP 244 HOLISTIC NURSING LEVEL I (1)
HHP 254 HOLISTIC NURSING LEVEL II (2)

Here is a link to the catalog if you want to look yourself, (Adobe format, page 93 of the catalog or page 30 of the adobe doc under the section Holistic Health).
http://frcc.cc.co.us/about/pubs

Terryt88
Skeptic Friend

USA
120 Posts

Posted - 11/15/2002 :  08:20:09   [Permalink]  Show Profile  Send Terryt88 a Yahoo! Message Send Terryt88 a Private Message
That's interesting, thanks for the link.

A buddy of mine from back in the day went to Boulder. His mother is an alternative "health care specialist." He mentioned some courses such as those but I never really paid much notice.

Hmm, I'll see if I can get him to post on here and talk about what they are teaching.
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filthy
SFN Die Hard

USA
14408 Posts

Posted - 11/15/2002 :  09:34:58   [Permalink]  Show Profile Send filthy a Private Message
Heh. In '77, I went into the VA hospital for my first spinal surgery. At the time, I also had a brand, new girlfriend; a pretty one. She visited every chance she got. Touch therapy works! Or, at least under those conditions, it certainly does.

Otherwise, it is a great vat of washings of the hog.

quote:


What kind of message is this sending to young students coming to the community college to start towards a career in the health services (something they heavily cater towards as evident by their large list of nursing and EMS classes)? This is how far the mighty dollar has gone in corrupting our education. They don't care that they are teaching them a bunch of pseudo-scientific potentially harmful gobbly-gook as long as they get a few more students to sign up (not to mention ripping students off teaching them this garbage). What a crock. I think a well designed very critical letter is needed for both the school's administration and the Denver Post/Rocky Mountain News.



You've got that right, jmcginn. But, nonsense courses have long plagued our educational system. My brother once told me that the University of Miami gave credits for Water Sking (he attended the school, but didn't take the course).

Why am I amused at this? I dunno. Perhaps it's because many dummies have money to all but buy a diploma. Schools, like most of the rest of us, will go to great lengths to get a piece of it. Capitolism in action, eh?



f

"What luck for rulers that men do not think." -- Adolf Hitler (1889 - 1945)

"If only we could impeach on the basis of criminal stupidity, 90% of the Rethuglicans and half of the Democrats would be thrown out of office." ~~ P.Z. Myres


"The default position of human nature is to punch the other guy in the face and take his stuff." ~~ Dude

Brother Boot Knife of Warm Humanitarianism,

and Crypto-Communist!

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Snake
SFN Addict

USA
2511 Posts

Posted - 11/21/2002 :  02:25:09   [Permalink]  Show Profile  Visit Snake's Homepage  Send Snake an ICQ Message  Send Snake a Yahoo! Message Send Snake a Private Message
quote:
Originally posted by jmcginn

Ok I am currently going back to school to eventually change careers from a software engineer to a physical anthropologists. Right now I am currently taking some of my needed core classes at a local community college, while taking an anthropology course at Colorado U at Boulder.

I was looking through the community college's catalog and came across a list of course descriptions under the dubious title "Holistic Health".

Here are a few of the crap courses being taught:

[quote]HHP 102 TOUCH FOR CAREGIVERS (.5)

My mother was a nurse, massage was something they learned in training.
It's relaxing. Loosens tight musselels.
The thing with the animals, if put in another way is also helpful, I know people who have trained dogs who visit hospitals, the paticents get much benifit from that.
I realize that's not what those courses are exactly, they are misguided in how they 'advertize' them. Could this be a case of the means justifys the end?
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jmcginn
Skeptic Friend

343 Posts

Posted - 11/21/2002 :  08:16:28   [Permalink]  Show Profile  Visit jmcginn's Homepage Send jmcginn a Private Message
quote:
Originally posted by Snake

quote:
Originally posted by jmcginn

Ok I am currently going back to school to eventually change careers from a software engineer to a physical anthropologists. Right now I am currently taking some of my needed core classes at a local community college, while taking an anthropology course at Colorado U at Boulder.

I was looking through the community college's catalog and came across a list of course descriptions under the dubious title "Holistic Health".

Here are a few of the crap courses being taught:

quote:
HHP 102 TOUCH FOR CAREGIVERS (.5)

My mother was a nurse, massage was something they learned in training.
It's relaxing. Loosens tight musselels.
The thing with the animals, if put in another way is also helpful, I know people who have trained dogs who visit hospitals, the paticents get much benifit from that.
I realize that's not what those courses are exactly, they are misguided in how they 'advertize' them. Could this be a case of the means justifys the end?




Yes I know massage is a valid therapy and that's not what is being discussed here. I also know that social interaction and simple human contact and have positive benefits for a patient, but not for the reason that holistic health advocates claim.

Their basic points are that the human body is surrounded by an invisibile (and now undetectable) energy field and that they can use their hands to smooth it out either by touching the patient or by waving their hands a few inches over the patient. This is the kind of garbage being taught here, not massage and the simple benefit of social contact, this is some mystic jumbo of crap without a shred of scientific evidence and quite a bit against it.

Here is a link about the subject from QuakcWatch: http://www.quackwatch.org/01QuackeryRelatedTopics/tt2.html

quote:
Therapeutic Touch was developed in the early 1970s by Dolores Krieger RN, a professor of nursing. Krieger and co-founder Dora Kunz stated that the human body is kept alive and vital by a force called prana (a Sanskrit term meaning "vital force") and that this energy flows around and through the body and is channeled by chakras, a series of non-physical energy centers in the body. Whereas the original protocol was based on actual physical touch [3], subsequent research claimed that similar results could be obtained without touching the patient [4]. Current practice is based on the assumption that the physical body is surrounded by an energy field that trained practitioners can detect, assess, and manipulate, and that imbalances in this energy field result in illness or pain, which TT can treat [5,6]. Imbalances are "felt" using the hands, and are described variously as a sensation of tingling, pressure, pulling, temperature variations, energy "spikes," or the like.


This also led to one of the more amazing studies by a 9 year old girl (Emily Rosa) that was published in the very prestigious Journal of the American Medical Association (probably the youngest person ever to be published in such a prestigious journal). Her study showed clearly that these so-called therapists could not detect a human energy field as they claimed. After which they changed their claim saying detection was not needed to heal a patient.

Link: http://www.quackwatch.org/01QuackeryRelatedTopics/ttresponse.html

Also her mom a RN published a large critique on all of the TT studies to date and found them all to be severely lacking in controls or results.

Link: http://www.quackwatch.org/01QuackeryRelatedTopics/tt.html

Yes I know that anything that relaxes, calms, or makes a patient feel more at ease can be of tremendous benefit, but this is not what these people are claiming. This borders on the line of oriental mysticism or voodoo.
Edited by - jmcginn on 11/21/2002 08:26:07
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Gorgo
SFN Die Hard

USA
5310 Posts

Posted - 11/21/2002 :  08:24:20   [Permalink]  Show Profile Send Gorgo a Private Message
Massage is quite different from Reiki or Therapeutic Touch. Neither Reiki or Therapeutic touch involve touching the body much.

I know the rent is in arrears
The dog has not been fed in years
It's even worse than it appears
But it's alright-
Jerry Garcia
Robert Hunter



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jmcginn
Skeptic Friend

343 Posts

Posted - 11/21/2002 :  08:25:12   [Permalink]  Show Profile  Visit jmcginn's Homepage Send jmcginn a Private Message
quote:
Originally posted by filthy

Heh. In '77, I went into the VA hospital for my first spinal surgery. At the time, I also had a brand, new girlfriend; a pretty one. She visited every chance she got. Touch therapy works! Or, at least under those conditions, it certainly does.

Otherwise, it is a great vat of washings of the hog.

quote:


What kind of message is this sending to young students coming to the community college to start towards a career in the health services (something they heavily cater towards as evident by their large list of nursing and EMS classes)? This is how far the mighty dollar has gone in corrupting our education. They don't care that they are teaching them a bunch of pseudo-scientific potentially harmful gobbly-gook as long as they get a few more students to sign up (not to mention ripping students off teaching them this garbage). What a crock. I think a well designed very critical letter is needed for both the school's administration and the Denver Post/Rocky Mountain News.



You've got that right, jmcginn. But, nonsense courses have long plagued our educational system. My brother once told me that the University of Miami gave credits for Water Sking (he attended the school, but didn't take the course).

Why am I amused at this? I dunno. Perhaps it's because many dummies have money to all but buy a diploma. Schools, like most of the rest of us, will go to great lengths to get a piece of it. Capitolism in action, eh?



f



You know I actually don't mind that Universities offer classes such as Water Skiing, as long as its a low credit elective or physical education class. I took a Horsemanship class while I was in college and it was a blast and quite education as well, but of course it was a single elective mixed in with tons of biology and chemistry classes and other general education courses I had to take. I also took a Backpacking and Orientation class that was fun as well, but again it was a 1 credit hour elective. These are fine and great, but this is not what this school is doing.

It would be similar to a school offering an alternative "Horsemanship" class where you are taught you can psychically link to the horse and you should do this by standing behind the horse and grabbing its testicles. You then should also care for your horse by touching him instead of brushing his coat down and mentally concentrating on his hoofs instead of cleaning them out. A young student who didn't know better who learned these "alternative" classes would be a danger to the horse and himself.

In the case of these "holistic" health classes these schools are helping create health care professionals that may well be a danger to those they are caring for, and that might be me or you or a loved one. Let's say my elderly grandmother gets hospitalized for a long period of time and receives care from one of these trained quacks. What if they "believe" their TT is the best therapy and they don't need to move her in the bed from time to time to prevent bed sores. Maybe they believe they can prevent them with TT instead, by smoothing out her "energy field". This is the kind of crap I am talking about, not massage, not social contact, not silly college electives, but pure unadulterated psuedo-scientific garbage.
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jmcginn
Skeptic Friend

343 Posts

Posted - 11/21/2002 :  08:30:26   [Permalink]  Show Profile  Visit jmcginn's Homepage Send jmcginn a Private Message
quote:
Originally posted by Gorgo

Massage is quite different from Reiki or Therapeutic Touch. Neither Reiki or Therapeutic touch involve touching the body much.



Yes exactly. Massage is a valid form of therapy for relaxing muscles. As long as its pracitioners don't overstate their claims about it, then it should be a good supplement to any treatment program for a patient.
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Denise
New Member

USA
23 Posts

Posted - 11/21/2002 :  15:31:14   [Permalink]  Show Profile Send Denise a Private Message
Here is a link some might find interesting. It's about a survey of American Medical Schools and how many offer alternative medicine and therapy courses.http://jama.ama-assn.org/issues/v280n9/abs/joc80673.html

Anyhow, I had viewed something like this on a news channel the other day, but was unable to find it- ok didn't want to search for hours.

To me - having medical schools offering courses on these subjects gives them legitimacy in the general public. Now, I do not know how these courses are offered. Do they claim that unfound alternative therapies are legitimate? Or, do they just seek to inform medical students of what their patients might be using along with general medicine.
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Snake
SFN Addict

USA
2511 Posts

Posted - 11/22/2002 :  01:32:52   [Permalink]  Show Profile  Visit Snake's Homepage  Send Snake an ICQ Message  Send Snake a Yahoo! Message Send Snake a Private Message
quote:
Originally posted by jmcginn
In the case of these "holistic" health classes these schools are helping create health care professionals that may well be a danger to those they are caring for, and that might be me or you or a loved one. Let's say my elderly grandmother gets hospitalized for a long period of time and receives care from one of these trained quacks

Let's hope your grandmother is not unintelligent and has a compatable relationship and understanding with her doctor before any long illness. As should any informed person.
I think it's a good thing for people to be trained in those classes for the same reason people should keep smoking.
If someone is so stupid to go to a quack or smoke they deserve what they get. Smokers must die along with people who can't make wise choices. The less people on Earth the better.
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jmcginn
Skeptic Friend

343 Posts

Posted - 11/22/2002 :  15:41:43   [Permalink]  Show Profile  Visit jmcginn's Homepage Send jmcginn a Private Message
quote:
Originally posted by Snake

quote:
Originally posted by jmcginn
In the case of these "holistic" health classes these schools are helping create health care professionals that may well be a danger to those they are caring for, and that might be me or you or a loved one. Let's say my elderly grandmother gets hospitalized for a long period of time and receives care from one of these trained quacks

Let's hope your grandmother is not unintelligent and has a compatable relationship and understanding with her doctor before any long illness. As should any informed person.
I think it's a good thing for people to be trained in those classes for the same reason people should keep smoking.
If someone is so stupid to go to a quack or smoke they deserve what they get. Smokers must die along with people who can't make wise choices. The less people on Earth the better.



Sadly my grandmother suffers severely from Alzeimers and can't remember her own kids let alone anything about medicine. Additionally her relationship with her doctor could mean squat since these are techniques used by nurses and even ones at quite a few hospitals and who knows how many long term care facilities. The only hope would be that the doctor could stop by and see this crap going on and put a stop to it. The nurses often practice these "techniques" without doctor orders and without the doctor knowing. A few doctors and nurses have led compaigns to have this crap forbidden at their facilities but there are countless more out there.

By the way my grandfather couldn't help her much either since he is slowly loosing his cognitive abilities at the age of 98 and neither have ever completed education past the 8th grade. My only hope is really my mom who stays in constant contact with them and travels up to see them on a regular basis. She is a registered dietician and quite a buff on medical info especially on any ailments that effect our family.
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jmcginn
Skeptic Friend

343 Posts

Posted - 11/22/2002 :  15:45:26   [Permalink]  Show Profile  Visit jmcginn's Homepage Send jmcginn a Private Message
quote:
Originally posted by Denise

Here is a link some might find interesting. It's about a survey of American Medical Schools and how many offer alternative medicine and therapy courses.http://jama.ama-assn.org/issues/v280n9/abs/joc80673.html

Anyhow, I had viewed something like this on a news channel the other day, but was unable to find it- ok didn't want to search for hours.

To me - having medical schools offering courses on these subjects gives them legitimacy in the general public. Now, I do not know how these courses are offered. Do they claim that unfound alternative therapies are legitimate? Or, do they just seek to inform medical students of what their patients might be using along with general medicine.



Thanks for the article Denise, that is quite alarming, however it is a little hard to determine if these schools are just teaching about these or are teaching these as full fledged techniques. I am a little less concerned that a doctor would try this (although I am sure there are some out) as opposed to a nurse with less training. At least at a medical school you would get a heavy dose of real medicine.
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Snake
SFN Addict

USA
2511 Posts

Posted - 11/22/2002 :  23:14:40   [Permalink]  Show Profile  Visit Snake's Homepage  Send Snake an ICQ Message  Send Snake a Yahoo! Message Send Snake a Private Message
quote:
Originally posted by jmcginn
Sadly my grandmother suffers severely from Alzeimers and can't remember her own kids let alone anything about medicine. Additionally her relationship with her doctor could mean squat since these are techniques used by nurses and even ones at quite a few hospitals and who knows how many long term care facilities. The only hope would be that the doctor could stop by and see this crap going on and put a stop to it. The nurses often practice these "techniques" without doctor orders and without the doctor knowing. A few doctors and nurses have led compaigns to have this crap forbidden at their facilities but there are countless more out there.

By the way my grandfather couldn't help her much either since he is slowly loosing his cognitive abilities at the age of 98 and neither have ever completed education past the 8th grade. My only hope is really my mom who stays in constant contact with them and travels up to see them on a regular basis. She is a registered dietician and quite a buff on medical info especially on any ailments that effect our family.


Sorry to hear about the real situation you are having. I thought you were only making a hypotheical sceanario. I can understand what you are saying since in my own family we've had similar happenings. My mother being a nurse was able to contribute to their care and watch over anything that might occure. Looks like you also have some back up in case anything happens to your grandparents.
I find it difficult to believe that a nurse or anyone else caring for someone under a doctors supervision would do anything without authorization. I do agree that it's not right that this subject or anything else such as creationism is made legitimite in schools without counter information offered. Logical people should educate themselves so as not to get caught up in the wave of backward knowledge.
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