TM bullying of news media (was Re: US vs. UK mantras)
Andrew A. Skolnick
>
> Thanks, Andrew
>
> Now I know that when the day comes to stuff my corpus delectable in a
> Hefty Cinch Sack and drop it at the curb, at least a piece of me will
> carry on. Better a rogues gallery than naught.
> Although it's a pretty bad neighborhood, even without dormice.
>
> Interesting concept, the mystical importance the hoppers attach to the
> deities they invoke during their naps. Don't know of any other
> "sciences" based on a secret password. Perhaps their Holy Grail, er,
> 500 studies address this point.
>
> As expected, our local domin-amt-rix missed the irony. As you know,
> when you take the initial TM program (on the slippery slope to
> impoverishment, mental and financial) the con man (er, teacher, such as
> Pee) has you sign a statement saying you won't reveal how you were
> ripped off. The local hoppers have said repeatedly on amt how vile
> anyone is who violates this agreement. Apparently it has the same
> effect as a stiff breeze on a house of cards.
>
> This is in direct contrast to the gyrations and contortions the hoppers
> use to justify the falsified conflict of interest statement signed by
> Chopra & co. Which you and the rest of the rational scientific
> community considered vile.
>
> But the two are actually consistent. TM didn't give a damm what the
> scientific community actually thought. Once published, the article
> would be used to give a veneer of respectability to the snake oil, to
> reinforce the con, to help take the marks - "Look we were in JAMA, TM
> must be a bargain at $500". Similarly the confidentiality statement is
> merely intended to reinforce the con, to reassure the marks.
>
> This is why it was important for you to hammer them in your award
> winning article. The rational scientific community objects to being
> used to advance the confidence games of grifters, enlightened or not.
> It is also why TM sued you for $190 million - "Let this be a warning to
> anyone who attempts to expose TMers for the weasels we are".
>
> Fortunately, TM hasn't figured out how to sue anyone for not publishing
> their tripe.
Well, the Movement at least has tried. A TM lawyer threatened to do to
Oncology Times what TM was doing to JAMA (suing for $194 million plus
expenses!) if Oncology Times didn't publish a 3000-word article touting
Maharishi Ayur-Veda. See a copy of the lawyer's threat:
http://www.sidaway.demon.co.uk/judyology/oncology1.html
Lippencott, the publisher of Oncology Times, stood firm and TM's attempt
to intimidate the cancer news publication into publishing a TM promo
piece blew up in the movement's face. The lawyer's letter came into my
hands and I shared it with the news media. The San Francisco Examiner
did a nice job exposing the affair, much to the TM movement's chagrin.
The lawyer even faxed a letter to the paper's editor, trying to persuade
him not to publish an account of the affair. Of course, that was like
adding kerosene to the fire.
The TM plaintiffs Deepak Chopra, The American Association for Ayur-Vedic
Medicine, and the Lancaster Foundation also threatened to refile their
$194 million lawsuit against the editor of JAMA, the AMA, and me if JAMA
did not publish an article from TM authors. If JAMA would publish such
an article, the plaintiffs agreed to sign a settlement permanently
ending the suit. (The suit had been dimissed without prejudice by a
federal judge in March 1993, which meant that the TM plaintiffs were
free to refile it in the future.)
For years, Judy Stein, Lawson English, and other TM propagandists have
been claiming that TM's suit was "secretly settled." There was a secret,
but it wasn't a settlement. The secret was an agreement made by TM
plaintiffs not to refile the suit if JAMA published an article submitted
by TM authors.
In July 1993, TM authors submitted an article to JAMA. It was sent out
for review, considered, and rejected. The article was rewritten and
resubmitted to JAMA in Dec. 1993. It was similarly peer reviewed,
considered, and rejected. The TM plaintiffs did not refile their suit.
The suit was never settled.
TM propagandists got away with this deceit for so long because I was not
free to discuss the AMA's actions as long as I worked for JAMA. Hell,
Chopra's attorney even lied to Newsweek that we had settled with Chopra
and the other plaintiffs for an undisclosed amount (Oct. 30, 1997, page
57).
Nothing in my article had to be retracted. No apology had to be given.
None of us had to give the TM plaintiffs a dime (although we paid a lot
to our own lawyers -- no doubt one of the intentions of the TM
plaintiffs). Yet for years, TM propagandists have been claiming they won
a settlement. Even in defeat the TM movement claims victory. Reminds me
of Milosevik's recent claims of victory over NATO.
<A little snipped from the sides.>
> Shirim shiriminey, shirim shirim the shrew,
>
> Legion
Big :->
--Andrew Skolnick
http://nasw.org/users/ASkolnick
Judy Stein
"Andrew A. Skolnick" <qasko...@mindspring.com> wrote:
> Legi...@webtv.net wrote:
<snip>
> > Fortunately, TM hasn't figured out how to sue anyone for not publishing
> > their tripe.
>
> Well, the Movement at least has tried. A TM lawyer threatened to do to
> Oncology Times what TM was doing to JAMA (suing for $194 million plus
> expenses!) if Oncology Times didn't publish a 3000-word article touting
> Maharishi Ayur-Veda. See a copy of the lawyer's threat:
> http://www.sidaway.demon.co.uk/judyology/oncology1.html
If you read the entire letter, you'll see that Andrew hasn't told
*quite* the whole story in his post here. Big surprise.
<snip>
> The TM plaintiffs Deepak Chopra, The American Association for Ayur-Vedic
> Medicine, and the Lancaster Foundation also threatened to refile their
> $194 million lawsuit against the editor of JAMA, the AMA, and me if JAMA
> did not publish an article from TM authors. If JAMA would publish such
> an article, the plaintiffs agreed to sign a settlement permanently
> ending the suit. (The suit had been dimissed without prejudice by a
> federal judge in March 1993, which meant that the TM plaintiffs were
> free to refile it in the future.)
>
> For years, Judy Stein, Lawson English, and other TM propagandists have
> been claiming that TM's suit was "secretly settled."
Actually I never made that claim, as Andrew well knows. I have
always suspected there was some kind of secret agreement behind
the scenes, and I've certainly voiced that suspicion, citing
evidence that suggested there had been.
Andrew has always flatly denied there was any kind of agreement.
Now we find it out was true all along.
We just didn't know what it had involved, an agreement which JAMA
never intended to honor.
There was a secret,
> but it wasn't a settlement. The secret was an agreement made by TM
> plaintiffs not to refile the suit if JAMA published an article submitted
> by TM authors.
Yeah, it wasn't a settlement, only a conditional agreement about
the terms for a settlement, which JAMA never intended to fulfill.
That sure makes us TMers look bad, don't it?
> In July 1993, TM authors submitted an article to JAMA. It was sent out
> for review, considered, and rejected. The article was rewritten and
> resubmitted to JAMA in Dec. 1993. It was similarly peer reviewed,
> considered, and rejected. The TM plaintiffs did not refile their suit.
> The suit was never settled.
What a wonderful demonstration of JAMA's integrity. It agreed to
publish a TM-written article, then refused to do so.
Of course, JAMA knew all along that it wasn't going to publish
any TM-written article; it signed the agreement in bad faith,
confident that when its double-dealing became obvious, the TM
folks wouldn't be able to get it together to refile. It was a
delaying tactic.
Were JAMA's lawyers aware Chopra was in the process of breaking
with the movement, and that by the time it was clear JAMA had
reneged, he wouldn't be likely to want to join the suit on TM's
side any longer?
> TM propagandists got away with this deceit for so long because I was not
> free to discuss the AMA's actions as long as I worked for JAMA.
No, you scummy asshole, there wasn't any deceit on the TMers'
parts, only on yours and JAMA's. The rumor that there had been a
secret agreement, as you have now told us after having denied it
for years, was absolutely true. Your accusations that we were
lying were themselves a lie.
Hell,
> Chopra's attorney even lied to Newsweek that we had settled with Chopra
> and the other plaintiffs for an undisclosed amount (Oct. 30, 1997, page
> 57).
I wonder what that article *actually* says.
Does JAMA know you're happily spilling the rotten beans about its
lack of ethics as fast as you can vomit them up, Andrew, now that
you no longer have to keep its dirty little secrets in order to
hang onto your job? Does JAMA know you're busy plastering its
private business documents on the Web and Usenet?
Are you taking your revenge for having been sacked?
Are you playing both ends against the middle, using the ugly
facts, on the one hand, to embarrass JAMA, and on the other to
take yet another swing at TM?
Or are you genuinely proud of what JAMA did?
You indicated in an earlier post you didn't approve of much of
JAMA's behavior, even found it despicable. Perhaps what you
despised were the times when JAMA *didn't* behave unethically.
God knows what's going through your crazed mind. You aren't just
a thoroughly ugly and reprehensible individual, you're a freaking
nutcase.
What kind of person would *brag* in a public forum about having
been a party to a subversion of the legal process?
I mean, one tends to assume that even someone whom one knows is a
chronic, unashamed liar like Andrew has *some* point at which
conscience and self-respect kick in.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
+ Judy Stein * The Author's Friend * jst...@panix.com +
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Andrew A. Skolnick
Judy lies. I said over and over that there was no settlement, secret or
otherwise, formal or informal.
> Now we find it out was true all along.
>
> We just didn't know what it had involved, an agreement which JAMA
> never intended to honor.
>
> There was a secret,
> > but it wasn't a settlement. The secret was an agreement made by TM
> > plaintiffs not to refile the suit if JAMA published an article submitted
> > by TM authors.
>
> Yeah, it wasn't a settlement, only a conditional agreement about
> the terms for a settlement, which JAMA never intended to fulfill.
> That sure makes us TMers look bad, don't it?
Judy is lying. JAMA did not violate any agreement.
> > In July 1993, TM authors submitted an article to JAMA. It was sent out
> > for review, considered, and rejected. The article was rewritten and
> > resubmitted to JAMA in Dec. 1993. It was similarly peer reviewed,
> > considered, and rejected. The TM plaintiffs did not refile their suit.
> > The suit was never settled.
>
> What a wonderful demonstration of JAMA's integrity. It agreed to
> publish a TM-written article, then refused to do so.
One day, Judy's lies are going to get so big that one is going to stick
in her throat and she will die.
JAMA never agreed to publish the article. JAMA made it clear to the TM
plaintiffs that, like all articles submitted to JAMA, the TM manuscript
would have to go through normal editorial review. Unless it was of
publishable quality, it would have to be rejected. The manuscript
submitted was seriously flawed. It was a thinly disguised advertisement
for TM. No major medical journal would publish it. JAMA could not
publish such a clearly flawed advertorial to make the threat of a $194
million lawsuit go away.
JAMA's only agreement was to do what it always does -- follow its
editorial policies.
JAMA stood up to TM's bullying and stood by its editorial integrity
despite the threat that the TM plaintiffs would hit it again with a $194
million lawsuit.
For some reason, this fact throws Judy into a venom and
obscenity-spewing rage. The rest of her vile rant speaks pretty much for
itself. And this from a woman who has spent most of her life following
the Maharishi's path to Enlightenment.
--Andrew Skolnick
http://nasw.org/users/ASkolnick
Andrew A. Skolnick
Junkyard Dog Web site.
http://www.aaskolnick.com/junkyarddog/vulgar.htm
--Andrew Skolnick
http://nasw.org/users/ASkolnick
Lawson English
>> Andrew has always flatly denied there was any kind of agreement.
>
>
>Judy lies. I said over and over that there was no settlement, secret or
>otherwise, formal or informal.
Er, please explain the difference between "agreement" and "informal
settlement."
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Lawson English. Squeak, snore, etc.
Check out <http://www.squeak.org>
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Andrew A. Skolnick
> >
> >
> >Judy lies. I said over and over that there was no settlement, secret or
> >otherwise, formal or informal.
>
> settlement."
For crying out loud, Lawson. "Agreement" can mean anything. Lawyers
agree on a meeting to discuss the law suit. Lawyers agree on where to
have lunch. Lawyers agree to provide each other copies of documents.
Lawyers and their clients often agree to a host of different motions and
stipulations.
A SETTLEMENT means that the parties agree that the suit is dismissed
with prejudice (it cannot be refiled). Once filed, civil suits are
either SETTLED, dismissed without prejudice, or they go to trial and
verdict. How many times do you have to be told there was no settlement?
It was dismissed without prejudice. There was no settlement. Lawson,
there was no settlement. Hello, can you hear me inside your teapot?
There was no settlement. Do you want me to scan and post the judge's
order dismissing the suit without prejudice? Would that help you
understand that the suit was dismissed, Lawson, not settled. Am I
typing too quickly? Can you say "no settlement?"
TM apologists continue to lie that their SLAPP suit against the editor
of JAMA, the AMA, and me was settled in their effort to discredit JAMA's
article exposing the TM mvoement's deceitful marketing tactics. For
example, Chopra's attorney even lied to Newsweek that we had settled
with Chopra and the other plaintiffs for an undisclosed amount
(Newsweek, Oct. 30, 1997, page 57).
--Andrew Skolnick
http://nasw.org/users/ASkolnick
PZ Myers
>I've added my response to Judy Stein's latest vulgar invective to the
>Junkyard Dog Web site.
>
>http://www.aaskolnick.com/junkyarddog/vulgar.htm
>
Why, it's an utterly charming piece of literature!
--
PZ Myers
Lawson English
>A SETTLEMENT means that the parties agree that the suit is dismissed
>with prejudice (it cannot be refiled). Once filed, civil suits are
>either SETTLED, dismissed without prejudice, or they go to trial and
>verdict. How many times do you have to be told there was no settlement?
>It was dismissed without prejudice. There was no settlement. Lawson,
>there was no settlement. Hello, can you hear me inside your teapot?
>There was no settlement. Do you want me to scan and post the judge's
>order dismissing the suit without prejudice? Would that help you
>understand that the suit was dismissed, Lawson, not settled. Am I
>typing too quickly? Can you say "no settlement?"
Is "informal settlement" a well-defined legal term?
If not, then you're merely splitting hairs, because it could mean anything
at all. You originally merely chose to say "no settlement" rather than say
"well, there WAS an agreement that I can't talk about, but no formal
settlement was ever reached."
Andrew A. Skolnick
aren't misled:
> Judy Stein wrote:
> > You indicated in an earlier post you didn't approve of much of
> > JAMA's behavior, even found it despicable. Perhaps what you
> > despised were the times when JAMA *didn't* behave unethically.
Not true. Judy knows this is a lie. I said I didn't approve of much of
what the American Medical Association, the publisher of JAMA, was doing.
I clearly made the distinction between journal and publisher and pointed
out to her that reporters commonly disagree with and/or dislike their
publisher.
The truth is on the record. Check out Dejanews:
http://x23.deja.com/[ST_rn=ps]/getdoc.xp?AN=494301659&CONTEXT=931810272.1515716739&hitnum=0
Shame on Judy for yet another malicious lie.
--Andrew Skolnick
http://nasw.org/users/ASkolnick
Andrew A. Skolnick
Judy lies. I said over and over that there was no settlement,
secret or otherwise, formal or informal.
> Er, please explain the difference between "agreement" and
> "informal settlement."
For crying out loud, Lawson. "Agreement" can mean anything.
Lawyers agree on a meeting to discuss the law suit. Lawyers
agree on where to have lunch. Lawyers agree to provide each
other copies of documents. Lawyers and their clients often
agree to a host of different motions and stipulations. ]
Lawson English wrote:
>
> Andrew A. Skolnick <qasko...@mindspring.com> said:
> >A SETTLEMENT means that the parties agree that the suit is dismissed
> >with prejudice (it cannot be refiled). Once filed, civil suits are
> >either SETTLED, dismissed without prejudice, or they go to trial and
> >verdict. How many times do you have to be told there was no settlement?
> >It was dismissed without prejudice. There was no settlement. Lawson,
> >there was no settlement. Hello, can you hear me inside your teapot?
> >There was no settlement. Do you want me to scan and post the judge's
> >order dismissing the suit without prejudice? Would that help you
> >understand that the suit was dismissed, Lawson, not settled. Am I
> >typing too quickly? Can you say "no settlement?"
>
> Is "informal settlement" a well-defined legal term?
>
> If not, then you're merely splitting hairs, because it could mean anything
> at all. You originally merely chose to say "no settlement" rather than say
> "well, there WAS an agreement that I can't talk about, but no formal
> settlement was ever reached."
I just knew you weren't going to withdraw your head from that teapot,
Lawson.
"Informal settlement" is an oxymoron. For a suit to be settled, it must
be formal.
Reaching an "informal settlement" is like becoming a "little pregnant."
You're either pregnant or you're not. You either settle or you don't.
Readers, continue watching. The Dormouse will find yet another way to
parse "there was no settlement" to prove that there was a settlement.
--Andrew Skolnick
http://nasw.org/users/ASkolnick
Lawson English
>"Informal settlement" is an oxymoron. For a suit to be settled, it must
>be formal.
>
>Reaching an "informal settlement" is like becoming a "little pregnant."
>You're either pregnant or you're not. You either settle or you don't.
>
>Readers, continue watching. The Dormouse will find yet another way to
>parse "there was no settlement" to prove that there was a settlement.
In which case, you should have pointed that oxymoron out, rather than issue
the blanket statement which did nothing to clarify the issues.
Andrew A. Skolnick
>
> Andrew A. Skolnick <qasko...@mindspring.com> said:
>
> >"Informal settlement" is an oxymoron. For a suit to be settled, it must
> >be formal.
> >
> >Reaching an "informal settlement" is like becoming a "little pregnant."
> >You're either pregnant or you're not. You either settle or you don't.
> >
> >Readers, continue watching. The Dormouse will find yet another way to
> >parse "there was no settlement" to prove that there was a settlement.
>
> In which case, you should have pointed that oxymoron out, rather than issue
> the blanket statement which did nothing to clarify the issues.
What in Heaven on Earth is the matter with you, Lawosn? I told you that
there was no settlement formal or informal. What part of "no" did you
not understand?
-- Andrew Skolnick
http://nasw.org/users/ASkolnick
(To reply or send email, remove "spam.block." from address
asko...@spam.block.mindspring.com)
Lawson English
>> In which case, you should have pointed that oxymoron out, rather than
>issue
>> the blanket statement which did nothing to clarify the issues.
>
>What in Heaven on Earth is the matter with you, Lawosn? I told you that
>there was no settlement formal or informal. What part of "no" did you
>not understand?
But an *agreement* was reached, was it not?
Show me the legal definition of "informal settlement," and explain why you
make a distinction.
For me, this is simply another example of how you twist things to suit
yourself.
Of course, certain people accuse ME of the same thing, but you know what?
Most people look at MY detractors and find them far more bizarre than I am,
or so I suspect.
Andrew A. Skolnick
has a challenge:
> >Readers, continue watching. The Dormouse will find yet another way to
> >parse "there was no settlement" to prove that there was a settlement.
Rising to the occassion, Lawson English wrote:
> Andrew A. Skolnick <asko...@spam.block.mindspring.com> said:
>
> >> In which case, you should have pointed that oxymoron out, rather than
> >> issue the blanket statement which did nothing to clarify the issues.
> >
> >What in Heaven on Earth is the matter with you, Lawosn? I told you that
> >there was no settlement formal or informal. What part of "no" did you
> >not understand?
>
> But an *agreement* was reached, was it not?
> Show me the legal definition of "informal settlement," and explain why you
> make a distinction.
No, Lawson, you show me "the legal definition of 'informal settlement.'"
Those are your words and I pointed out that they are an oxymoron. To be
binding, a settlement has to be formal. You can't be a little pregnant.
And you can't have a suit a little settled.
> For me, this is simply another example of how you twist things to suit
> yourself.
The only twisting being done here, Lawson, is yours. You can offer no
evidence of any settlement, because there was none. So your play your TM
word games for some bizarre purpose I cannot fathom. They are fooling no
one.
No agreement settling the case was reached. There was no settlement. The
case was not settled. There was no agreement that settled the case. No
settlement was reached. There was no formal settlement. There was no
informal settlement. The case was never settled. No agreement settling
the case was reached. The TM plaintiffs did not get what they demanded.
They did not agree to dismiss the case with prejudice. The case was not
settled. There was no formal settlement. There was no informal
settlement.
I don't know how else to say it. But I'm sure there is no way I can to
get Lawson to stop playing his word games. His agenda to defend TM
demands that the JAMA's editor, the AMA and I secretly settled the suit.
To Lawson, the needs of the TM movement are the ultimate truth.
Lawson English
"Informal settlement" is undefined. You acknowledge that it doesn't make
any sense, but rather than asking clarification for what I meant by
"informal settlement" you chose to obsuscate matters by taking the meaning
of the word "settlement" in the legal setting and apply it to a term that
you yourself assert doesn't make any sense.
Why didn't you EVER ask for clarification of what I meant by "informal
settlement" rather than defining it as "legal settlement?"
Suppose that I had said:
There was some kind of informal agreement between the interested parties.
What would you have said back then?
Hmmm?
Andrew A. Skolnick <asko...@spam.block.mindspring.com> said:
I said:
[mucho snipto]
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Andrew A. Skolnick
>
> Back at ya.
>
> "Informal settlement" is undefined. You acknowledge that it doesn't make
> any sense, but rather than asking clarification for what I meant by
> "informal settlement" you chose to obsuscate matters by taking the meaning
> of the word "settlement" in the legal setting and apply it to a term that
> you yourself assert doesn't make any sense.
>
> Why didn't you EVER ask for clarification of what I meant by "informal
> settlement" rather than defining it as "legal settlement?"
Excusing me for "taking the meaning of the word 'settlement' in the
legal setting." I leaped to that conclusion because WE WERE TALKING
ABOUT THE SETTLEMENT OF A LAW SUIT!
We were talking about a law suit that was dismissed without prejudice.
Excuse me for assuming you were speaking English. But English is just
your last name. Apparently you prefer to converse in TM speak. "Informal
settlement" made no sense. I told you so. And I told you that there was
no settlement formal or informal.
> Suppose that I had said:
>
> There was some kind of informal agreement between the interested parties.
>
> What would you have said back then?
>
> Hmmm?
As with all legal disputes, there were many informal agreements between
the parties. Where to meet next. When to meet next. What documents have
to be supplied. Etc. Was there an agreement that settled the case? No.
I've told you this a million times. But you seem to think that by asking
the same question in a million different twisted ways, you can make it
appear that there was "an informal settlement."
Lawson, do you have any idea how you appear to others?
-- Andrew Skolnick
SantyClz
This "discussion" seems to hinge upon a fairly
simple misunderstanding.
What Andrew thought he said was (paraphrased):
1. Dr. Chopra et. al. made a threat of renewing the
lawsuit unless JAMA agreed to publish a subsequent
article about TM.
2. This threat was ignored by JAMA.
3. A subsequent article was submitted and rejected
for whatever reasons.
What Judy and Lawson think Andrew said was the same
except for "2." above, which they think was:
2. This was agreed to by JAMA.
Is this a fair summary?
If so, what evidence do we have to show which interpretation
of "2." is correct? (Not, in this case, what Andrew
said, but which is correct in fact [assuming facts are
of interest to anyone.])
Joe "no punching in the clinches" Shair
--
G! d? s+:+ a++ C+++ U--- P L E-- W+ N* w PS+++
PE Y+ PGP- t+ 5 X+ R* tv-- b+++ G e h+ y+++(**)
Remove invisible words to reply.
Andrew Skolnick
>
> <hack/>
>
> This "discussion" seems to hinge upon a fairly
> simple misunderstanding.
>
> What Andrew thought he said was (paraphrased):
>
> 1. Dr. Chopra et. al. made a threat of renewing the
> lawsuit unless JAMA agreed to publish a subsequent
> article about TM.
>
> 2. This threat was ignored by JAMA.
>
> 3. A subsequent article was submitted and rejected
> for whatever reasons.
>
> What Judy and Lawson think Andrew said was the same
> except for "2." above, which they think was:
>
> 2. This was agreed to by JAMA.
>
> Is this a fair summary?
No. That wasn't what I said.
JAMA did not ignore TM's threat. JAMA did just what it told the TM
plaintiffs it would do. The journal followed its editorial policy
regarding reviewing manuscripts that are submitted for publication. TM's
agreement was that, if JAMA published an article written by TM authors,
the plaintiffs would sign an agreement never to refile the suit.
The article submitted to JAMA was fatally flawed and had to be rejected.
The TM authors revised and resubmitted it. The revision was fatally
flawed and had to be rejected. We at JAMA braced ourselves for the
plaintiffs to refile their suit. They never did.
> If so, what evidence do we have to show which interpretation
> of "2." is correct? (Not, in this case, what Andrew
> said, but which is correct in fact [assuming facts are
> of interest to anyone.])
The documentation is right by my scanner. So go ahead Lawson, challenge
me.
SantyClz
>
> SantyClz wrote:
> >
> > <hack/>
> >
> > This "discussion" seems to hinge upon a fairly
> > simple misunderstanding.
>
> No. That wasn't what I said.
OK, I was wrong. (Won't be the last time.)
>
> JAMA did not ignore TM's threat. JAMA did just what it told the TM
> plaintiffs it would do.
Which was?
>The journal followed its editorial policy
> regarding reviewing manuscripts that are submitted for publication. TM's
> agreement was that, if JAMA published an article written by TM authors,
> the plaintiffs would sign an agreement never to refile the suit.
>
> The article submitted to JAMA was fatally flawed and had to be rejected.
> The TM authors revised and resubmitted it. The revision was fatally
> flawed and had to be rejected.
Do you, at this late date, recall why?
>We at JAMA braced ourselves for the
> plaintiffs to refile their suit. They never did.
Any idea why not?
<hack/>
Does anyone have a copy of the rejected article?
Joe Shair
Andrew Skolnick
>
> Andrew Skolnick wrote:
> >
> > SantyClz wrote:
> > >
> > > <hack/>
> > >
> > > This "discussion" seems to hinge upon a fairly
> > > simple misunderstanding.
> <hack/>
> >
> > No. That wasn't what I said.
>
> OK, I was wrong. (Won't be the last time.)
>
> >
> > JAMA did not ignore TM's threat. JAMA did just what it told the TM
> > plaintiffs it would do.
>
> Which was?
I explained in the words that followed.
> > The journal followed its editorial policy
> > regarding reviewing manuscripts that are submitted for publication. TM's
> > agreement was that, if JAMA published an article written by TM authors,
> > the plaintiffs would sign an agreement never to refile the suit.
> >
> > The article submitted to JAMA was fatally flawed and had to be rejected.
> > The TM authors revised and resubmitted it. The revision was fatally
> > flawed and had to be rejected.
>
> Do you, at this late date, recall why?
>
Certainly. The study compared the Canadian government's expenditures for
health care for people before and after they became TM meditators. It
found that the government medical expenditures were less following their
taking up TM.
The two most fatal flaws I can remember are these: Members of the TM
movement tend to rely on Maharishi Ayur-Veda treatments rather than on
conventional medical services, therefore the decline in government
health care expenditures may be explained by the TMers' bias against
conventional medicine rather than by hypothetical health benefits of TM.
Second, the comparisons were invalid: they did not include the costs to
learn TM and the costs of TM remedies. If you're going to compare the
cost benefits between alternative approaches you must include the costs
of both approaches. The TM paper only considered the costs of convential
medical care. It was a pathetic attempt.
It took about three years after JAMA rejected the manuscript for the
authors to get the paper published in a minor medical publication.
> > We at JAMA braced ourselves for the
> > plaintiffs to refile their suit. They never did.
>
> Any idea why not?
I could only speculate.
I will say this: When the federal judge ruled against the TM plaintiff's
motion for a restraint on our speech, he cited a number of similar cases
and told the plaintiffs that they were not likely to win on the merits
of their case. According to my lawyer, the judge's ruling sent the
plaintiffs a message that they best take their frivilous suit out of his
court. The suit was dismissed without prejudice about 6 months later.
> Does anyone have a copy of the rejected article?
I do. But it is important to point out that I did not obtain the article
through JAMA. I was pretty much cut off from AMA and TM negotiations
after I told the AMA that I would never agree to any settlement that was
secret or that involved any form of censorship. My attorney and I
threatened to separate our suit if the AMA went along with the
plaintiff's demands for secrecy and censorship.
As a result, when the TM article arrived at JAMA, I was kept completely
in the dark. Indeed, one of the AMA's lawyers even lied to me about
receiving the manuscript. Fortunately, I had many other sources of
information both inside and outside the TM movement. I received a copy
of the manuscript from an outside source within a few weeks of JAMA
receiving it. I also received a copy of the revised version from my
source.
This is important to point out because, had I learned about this
manuscript in my capacity as associate editor of JAMA, I would not
publicly discuss it. That is JAMA's policy and even though I no longer
work there, I will not publicly disclose any information concerning
manuscripts that I acquired while working at JAMA.
Lawson English
>>We at JAMA braced ourselves for the
>> plaintiffs to refile their suit. They never did.
>
>Any idea why not?
My guess is because the most obvious principal, Deepak Chopra, had decided
to leave the TM movement and strike out on his own. Without Chopra as
co-plaintiff, the judge had already indicated that he wouldn't let the
lawsuit proceed. Who knows if it would have proceeded if CHopra HAD been a
co-plaintiff? The judge never ruled on this point and the rest is history.
Lawson English
>Certainly. The study compared the Canadian government's expenditures for
>health care for people before and after they became TM meditators. It
>found that the government medical expenditures were less following their
>taking up TM.
>
>The two most fatal flaws I can remember are these: Members of the TM
>movement tend to rely on Maharishi Ayur-Veda treatments rather than on
>conventional medical services, therefore the decline in government
>health care expenditures may be explained by the TMers' bias against
>conventional medicine rather than by hypothetical health benefits of TM.
Documented evidence for this? Fact is, only a handful of people, regardless
of whether or not they practice TM, ever bother with any aspect of MAV.
There have been about 2 million people who learned TM in the USA in the
last 30 years. If even a significant (10%) of them were purchasing MAV
products and services, MAPI and Maharishi Ayurveda Prevention Centers would
be EXTREMELY profitable. I mean, as you pointed out, the MAK concoctions
cost about $900/year. If 200,000 people were taking MAK, the gross revenues
for MAPI for MAK alone would be nearly $200 MILLION/year. In fact, the last
time I talked to anyone at MAPI about this (about 5 years ago, I believe),
they were bragging that they had about 5-10,000 people taking MAK
regularly.
Add in the $1000/quarter pancharkarma treatments, and you would get another
$800 million/year, yielding gross revenues of about $1 billion/year.
Finally, the assumption is that TMers do NOT use Western medicine, which is
just plain wrong. WHile it is true that many New Agers (including those
that learn TM) don't go to MDs, most people who learn TM are NOT New Agers,
and their utility of western medicine WHEN THEY ARE ILL is likely no
different than any other non-New-Age group (aside from the New Ager
constituent, of course). Another study on health insurance claims amongst
TM users found that they WERE less likely to be hospitalized except when
dealing with delivery, which was commensurate with the average utilization.
Unless you are claiming that TMers don't use mid-wives, but otherwise are
all New Agers, the implication is that TMers use hospitals when they need
them, but don't need them as often save when they want to have a baby
(which is not something that TM would affect).
>Second, the comparisons were invalid: they did not include the costs to
>learn TM and the costs of TM remedies. If you're going to compare the
>cost benefits between alternative approaches you must include the costs
>of both approaches. The TM paper only considered the costs of convential
>medical care. It was a pathetic attempt.
But there is no evidence that rank-and-file TMers use MAV significantly
more than they use Western medicine, and definitive evidence that they do
NOT use MAV much, if at all. Otherwise, the MAV clinics and MAPI would be
making tons of money, and they are not.
Note that I am assuming that only 10% of those who learned TM in the USA
are still practicing it, and that if more than 10% of those who learned are
still practicing it, then, if you were correct in your claim, we would
expect even MORE profit for MAV clinics and MAPI, which is obviously not
the case.
>
>It took about three years after JAMA rejected the manuscript for the
>authors to get the paper published in a minor medical publication.
>
How long does it usually take for a submitted article to reach publication?
>> > We at JAMA braced ourselves for the
>> > plaintiffs to refile their suit. They never did.
>>
>> Any idea why not?
>
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Lawson English
>The documentation is right by my scanner. So go ahead Lawson, challenge
>me.
<snore>
huh?
<yawn> <stretch>
Wha?
Oh, yeah, sure Andrew. Go ahead and scan in stuff to support your claims
that I never challenged. Fine by me. You've done it before.
<snore>
SantyClz
>
> SantyClz wrote:
> >
> > Andrew Skolnick wrote:
> > >
> > > SantyClz wrote:
> > > >
> > > > <hack/>
> > > >
> > > > This "discussion" seems to hinge upon a fairly
> > > > simple misunderstanding.
> > <hack/>
> > >
> > > No. That wasn't what I said.
> >
> > OK, I was wrong. (Won't be the last time.)
> >
> > >
> > > JAMA did not ignore TM's threat. JAMA did just what it told the TM
> > > plaintiffs it would do.
> >
> > Which was?
>
> I explained in the words that followed.
>
> > > The journal followed its editorial policy
> > > regarding reviewing manuscripts that are submitted for publication. TM's
> > > agreement was that, if JAMA published an article written by TM authors,
> > > the plaintiffs would sign an agreement never to refile the suit.
One would assume that any article submitted to JAMA
would be considered for publication using JAMA's
publication rules and procedures. Is this not the
case?
Was some sort of specific agreement made with Dr's
Chopra et. al. about the handling of the submission
from them or from the TM organization? (I mean
something like "We agree to give priority to
publishing an article from... as long as it meets
our publication rules and if we do publish they
will agree not to renew or continue the lawsuit.")
<hack/>
> > Does anyone have a copy of the rejected article?
>
> I do. But it is important to point out that I did not obtain the article
> through JAMA. I was pretty much cut off from AMA and TM negotiations
> after I told the AMA that I would never agree to any settlement that was
> secret or that involved any form of censorship. My attorney and I
> threatened to separate our suit if the AMA went along with the
> plaintiff's demands for secrecy and censorship.
>
<hack/>
Since you received it as you did, could you send me
a copy?
Thanks
Joe Shair
--
G! d? s+:+ a++ C+++ U--- P L E-- W+ N* w PS+++
PE Y+ PGP- t+ 5 X+ R* tv-- b+++ G e h+ y+++(**)
I read it on af-ca so it must be true - Don Whittington
SantyClz
>
> >Certainly. The study compared the Canadian government's expenditures for
> >health care for people before and after they became TM meditators. It
> >found that the government medical expenditures were less following their
> >taking up TM.
> >
> >The two most fatal flaws I can remember are these: Members of the TM
> >movement tend to rely on Maharishi Ayur-Veda treatments rather than on
> >conventional medical services, therefore the decline in government
> >health care expenditures may be explained by the TMers' bias against
> >conventional medicine rather than by hypothetical health benefits of TM.
>
> Documented evidence for this? Fact is, only a handful of people, regardless
> of whether or not they practice TM, ever bother with any aspect of MAV.
> There have been about 2 million people who learned TM in the USA in the
> last 30 years. If even a significant (10%) of them were purchasing MAV
> products and services, MAPI and Maharishi Ayurveda Prevention Centers would
> be EXTREMELY profitable. I mean, as you pointed out, the MAK concoctions
> cost about $900/year. If 200,000 people were taking MAK, the gross revenues
> for MAPI for MAK alone would be nearly $200 MILLION/year. In fact, the last
> time I talked to anyone at MAPI about this (about 5 years ago, I believe),
> they were bragging that they had about 5-10,000 people taking MAK
> regularly.
So where can we get income information on AAAM,
MAPI, et. al. (and TM, Inc.)?
>
> Add in the $1000/quarter pancharkarma treatments, and you would get another
> $800 million/year, yielding gross revenues of about $1 billion/year.
>
> Finally, the assumption is that TMers do NOT use Western medicine, which is
> just plain wrong. WHile it is true that many New Agers (including those
> that learn TM) don't go to MDs, most people who learn TM are NOT New Agers,
> and their utility of western medicine WHEN THEY ARE ILL is likely no
> different than any other non-New-Age group (aside from the New Ager
> constituent, of course). Another study on health insurance claims amongst
> TM users found that they WERE less likely to be hospitalized except when
> dealing with delivery, which was commensurate with the average utilization.
> Unless you are claiming that TMers don't use mid-wives, but otherwise are
> all New Agers, the implication is that TMers use hospitals when they need
> them, but don't need them as often save when they want to have a baby
> (which is not something that TM would affect).
When you make the claim (not specifically the one above)
about TM related studies, do you include only studies
made since (paraphrase) "TM has made significant strides
towards openness", as you seem to believe that any data
from before that time is suspect at best?
As an aside, do you think that if a TM study made today
showed a negative result (not a null one) about any TM
claim, that the results of the study would be archived
or destroyed? (I'm asking Lawson, Andrew, I think I
know your opinion.)
>
> >Second, the comparisons were invalid: they did not include the costs to
> >learn TM and the costs of TM remedies. If you're going to compare the
> >cost benefits between alternative approaches you must include the costs
> >of both approaches. The TM paper only considered the costs of convential
> >medical care. It was a pathetic attempt.
>
> But there is no evidence that rank-and-file TMers use MAV significantly
> more than they use Western medicine, and definitive evidence that they do
> NOT use MAV much, if at all. Otherwise, the MAV clinics and MAPI would be
> making tons of money, and they are not.
Wasn't the intent of the article to demonstrate
that they do use TM and MAV and this results in
an absolute decrease in health costs? (Or am I
missing something obvious again?)
>
> Note that I am assuming that only 10% of those who learned TM in the USA
> are still practicing it, and that if more than 10% of those who learned are
> still practicing it, then, if you were correct in your claim, we would
> expect even MORE profit for MAV clinics and MAPI, which is obviously not
> the case.
If this is the case, why wouldn't the article in
question contain this information and not be subject
to being faulted for lack of complete cost coverage,
particularly if it had been rejected previously for
this reason?
<hack/>
encapsulight
Lawson English <eng...@primenet.com> wrote in message
news:B3B6331...@206.165.43.141...
> SantyClz <sant...@bellfnordsouth.net> said:
>
> >>We at JAMA braced ourselves for the
> >> plaintiffs to refile their suit. They never did.
> >
> >Any idea why not?
>
>
>
> My guess is because the most obvious principal, Deepak Chopra, had decided
> to leave the TM movement and strike out on his own. Without Chopra as
> co-plaintiff, the judge had already indicated that he wouldn't let the
> lawsuit proceed. Who knows if it would have proceeded if CHopra HAD been a
> co-plaintiff? The judge never ruled on this point and the rest is history.
>
Judy Stein
SantyClz <sant...@bellfnordsouth.net> wrote:
> Lawson English wrote:
<snip>
> > If 200,000 people were taking MAK, the gross revenues for
> > MAPI for MAK alone would be nearly $200 MILLION/year. In fact,
> > the last time I talked to anyone at MAPI about this (about 5
> > years ago, I believe), they were bragging that they had about
> > 5-10,000 people taking MAK regularly.
>
> So where can we get income information on AAAM,
> MAPI, et. al. (and TM, Inc.)?
I believe there have recently been new regulations instituted
requiring the records of nonprofits to be made open to public
inspection. Don't know when exactly they go into effect, but my
impression is it should be within the year. Don't know whether
you'd contact the TM organization or the IRS to obtain the
records.
I also don't know that you could get the income information on
MAPI Inc., since that *is* a for-profit company. Presumably you
could find out how much of that income went to its nonprofit
owner, however.
<snip>
> When you make the claim (not specifically the one above)
> about TM related studies, do you include only studies
> made since (paraphrase) "TM has made significant strides
> towards openness", as you seem to believe that any data
> from before that time is suspect at best?
For the record, the phrase you quote was mine, and the context
was limited to the matter of openness about what Yogic Flying
involved. I don't make that claim in any other context; I don't
have any evidence one way or the other. For that matter, I don't
know that TM was ever less than open about its scientific studies
to begin with, only that it *did* say misleading things about
"levitation."
<snip>
> Wasn't the intent of the article to demonstrate
> that they do use TM and MAV and this results in
> an absolute decrease in health costs? (Or am I
> missing something obvious again?)
Yes, you're missing something. Maybe it wasn't obvious, but the
hypothesis was that *TM practice* decreased health care
utilization. The study compared the utilization statistics on
people before and after they had learned TM.
Andrew claims that once you've learned TM, you immediately reject
Western medicine and start spending your money on Maharishi
Ayur-Veda instead. That's what Lawson was addressing.
Andrew's objection about not including the fee to learn TM in the
health care utilization costs being studied seems reasonable on
its face, but you'd have to know a lot more about the study to be
sure--such as how many years it followed the subjects after
they'd learned TM, how many people were in the study, and how
great the differences were between health care utilization costs
before and after they learned TM.
> > Note that I am assuming that only 10% of those who learned TM
> > in the USA are still practicing it, and that if more than 10% of
> > those who learned are still practicing it, then, if you were
> > correct in your claim, we would expect even MORE profit for MAV
> > clinics and MAPI, which is obviously not the case.
>
> If this is the case, why wouldn't the article in
> question contain this information and not be subject
> to being faulted for lack of complete cost coverage,
> particularly if it had been rejected previously for
> this reason?
?? Lawson's pointing out that it's highly unlikely the subjects
would have spent enough on MAV to make a significant difference
in the figures.
You raise a good point in one respect: if the fact that the fee
to learn TM wasn't included in the health care utilization costs
was such a "fatal flaw," you'd think it would have been pointed
out to the authors when they first submitted the article, and
that this flaw would have been remedied by the second
submission--if they didn't want to figure this in, and they knew
JAMA considered it a fatal flaw, why would they bother to
resubmit it?
Lawson English
>Lawson English wrote:
>>
>> >Certainly. The study compared the Canadian government's expenditures
>for
>> >health care for people before and after they became TM meditators. It
>> >found that the government medical expenditures were less following
>their
>> >taking up TM.
>> >
>> >The two most fatal flaws I can remember are these: Members of the TM
>> >movement tend to rely on Maharishi Ayur-Veda treatments rather than on
>> >conventional medical services, therefore the decline in government
>> >health care expenditures may be explained by the TMers' bias against
>> >conventional medicine rather than by hypothetical health benefits of
TM.
>>
>> Documented evidence for this? Fact is, only a handful of people,
>regardless
>> of whether or not they practice TM, ever bother with any aspect of MAV.
>> There have been about 2 million people who learned TM in the USA in the
>> last 30 years. If even a significant (10%) of them were purchasing MAV
>> products and services, MAPI and Maharishi Ayurveda Prevention Centers
>would
>> be EXTREMELY profitable. I mean, as you pointed out, the MAK concoctions
>> cost about $900/year. If 200,000 people were taking MAK, the gross
>revenues
>> for MAPI for MAK alone would be nearly $200 MILLION/year. In fact, the
>last
>> time I talked to anyone at MAPI about this (about 5 years ago, I
believe),
>> they were bragging that they had about 5-10,000 people taking MAK
>> regularly.
>
>So where can we get income information on AAAM,
>MAPI, et. al. (and TM, Inc.)?
>
Not sure, but you can make a good guess of the overall income of the TM
organization based on the price and the approximate number of new
meditators per year (which is way down from the 70's). Likewise, if you
politely ask the telephone sales-person how many "continuity customers"
there are using MAK, the MAPI rep may just tell you (like she did me). TM,
being a non-profit, educational organization, may have publicly available
records, not sure.
>>
>> Add in the $1000/quarter pancharkarma treatments, and you would get
>another
>> $800 million/year, yielding gross revenues of about $1 billion/year.
>>
>> Finally, the assumption is that TMers do NOT use Western medicine, which
>is
>> just plain wrong. WHile it is true that many New Agers (including those
>> that learn TM) don't go to MDs, most people who learn TM are NOT New
>Agers,
>> and their utility of western medicine WHEN THEY ARE ILL is likely no
>> different than any other non-New-Age group (aside from the New Ager
>> constituent, of course). Another study on health insurance claims
amongst
>> TM users found that they WERE less likely to be hospitalized except when
>> dealing with delivery, which was commensurate with the average
>utilization.
>> Unless you are claiming that TMers don't use mid-wives, but otherwise
>are
>> all New Agers, the implication is that TMers use hospitals when they
need
>> them, but don't need them as often save when they want to have a baby
>> (which is not something that TM would affect).
>
>When you make the claim (not specifically the one above)
>about TM related studies, do you include only studies
>made since (paraphrase) "TM has made significant strides
>towards openness", as you seem to believe that any data
>from before that time is suspect at best?
I don't believe that that was me. However, the research HAS gotten better
for many different reasons, including the fact that they are now using
public money to do the research. The specific study that I am referring to
was a retrospective of health-care utilization of an insurance policy that
was only available to TMers.
>
>As an aside, do you think that if a TM study made today
>showed a negative result (not a null one) about any TM
>claim, that the results of the study would be archived
>or destroyed? (I'm asking Lawson, Andrew, I think I
>know your opinion.)
>
A TM-sponsored study? I think that they would pretend that it was never
done. As I said, they appear to be very careful about what they are willing
to investigate using outside research money, e.g., NIH funding, at least
partially to avoid finding no effect or even negative effects.
>>
>> >Second, the comparisons were invalid: they did not include the costs to
>> >learn TM and the costs of TM remedies. If you're going to compare the
>> >cost benefits between alternative approaches you must include the costs
>> >of both approaches. The TM paper only considered the costs of
convential
>> >medical care. It was a pathetic attempt.
>>
>> But there is no evidence that rank-and-file TMers use MAV significantly
>> more than they use Western medicine, and definitive evidence that they
do
>> NOT use MAV much, if at all. Otherwise, the MAV clinics and MAPI would
>be
>> making tons of money, and they are not.
>
>Wasn't the intent of the article to demonstrate
>that they do use TM and MAV and this results in
>an absolute decrease in health costs? (Or am I
>missing something obvious again?)
>
The Canada study, if I recall correctly, tracked the health care
utilization of Canada's public health care system of several hundred
Canadians who had learned TM. No attempt was made to control for any other
factor other than having learned TM, although the records were reviewed for
several years prior to the start of TM in order to establish a "base" for
health costs, allowing for age, inflation, etc.
>>
>> Note that I am assuming that only 10% of those who learned TM in the USA
>> are still practicing it, and that if more than 10% of those who learned
are
>> still practicing it, then, if you were correct in your claim, we would
>> expect even MORE profit for MAV clinics and MAPI, which is obviously not
>> the case.
>
>If this is the case, why wouldn't the article in
>question contain this information and not be subject
>to being faulted for lack of complete cost coverage,
>particularly if it had been rejected previously for
>this reason?
I have no idea. Maybe the article was rewritten, or my counters to Andrew's
remarks are off-the-wall, or the study simply was deemed unworthy of
publication in JAMA. It was eventually published in [pause for realtime
PubMed Medline search]:
Am J Health Promot 1996 Jan-Feb;10(3):208-16
The impact of the transcendental meditation program on government payments
to physicians in Quebec.
Herron RE, Hillis SL, Mandarino JV, Orme-Johnson DW, Walton KG
Health Policy Development, Institute of Science, Technology and Public
Policy, Maharishi University of Management, Fairfield, IA 52557, USA.
PURPOSE: This study evaluated whether governmental medical payments in
Quebec were affected by the Transcendental Meditation (TM) technique.
DESIGN: This retrospective study used a pre- and postintervention design in
which government payments for physicians' services were reviewed for 3
years before and up to 7 years after subjects started the technique.
Payment data were adjusted for aging and year-specific variation (including
inflation) using normative data. No separate control group was used; thus
it is impossible to determine whether the changes were caused by the TM
program or some other factor. SUBJECTS: A volunteer group of 677 provincial
health insurance enrollees was evaluated. The subjects had chosen to
practice the TM technique before they were selected to enter the study. The
subjects (348 men, 329 women) had diverse occupations. Their average age
was 38 years and ranged from 18 to 71 years at the start of the TM program.
INTERVENTION: The TM technique of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi is a standardized
procedure practiced for 15 to 20 minutes twice daily while sitting
comfortably with eyes closed. SETTING: Province of Quebec, Canada. RESULTS:
During the 3 years before starting the TM program, the adjusted payments to
physicians for treating the subjects did not change significantly. After
beginning TM practice, subjects' adjusted expenses declined significantly.
The several methods used to assess the rate of decline showed estimates
ranging from 5% to 7% annually. CONCLUSIONS: The results suggests that the
TM technique reduces government payments to physicians. However, because of
the sampling method used, the generalizability of these results to wider
populations could not be evaluated."
Lawson English
>You raise a good point in one respect: if the fact that the fee
>to learn TM wasn't included in the health care utilization costs
>was such a "fatal flaw," you'd think it would have been pointed
>out to the authors when they first submitted the article, and
>that this flaw would have been remedied by the second
>submission--if they didn't want to figure this in, and they knew
>JAMA considered it a fatal flaw, why would they bother to
>resubmit it?
>
It wasn't that ground-breaking a study in the first place, and the
conclusion wasn't that it had saved anyone money (at least the abstract
didn't say that) but that the documented average health care cost in the
TMers declined about 5-7% per year for the period of the study.
SantyClz
>
> In article <37910692...@bellfnordsouth.net>,
> SantyClz <sant...@bellfnordsouth.net> wrote:
>
>
> > So where can we get income information on AAAM,
> > MAPI, et. al. (and TM, Inc.)?
>
> requiring the records of nonprofits to be made open to public
> inspection. Don't know when exactly they go into effect, but my
> impression is it should be within the year. Don't know whether
> you'd contact the TM organization or the IRS to obtain the
> records.
>
> I also don't know that you could get the income information on
> MAPI Inc., since that *is* a for-profit company. Presumably you
> could find out how much of that income went to its nonprofit
> owner, however.
Most (all?) publicly owned companies make an annual report
to their shareholders. Are AAAM, MAPI, TM Inc., etc. publicly
or privately held? Are the others legally divisions of TM Inc.?
>
> <snip>
> > When you make the claim (not specifically the one above)
> > about TM related studies, do you include only studies
> > made since (paraphrase) "TM has made significant strides
> > towards openness", as you seem to believe that any data
> > from before that time is suspect at best?
>
> For the record, the phrase you quote was mine, and the context
> was limited to the matter of openness about what Yogic Flying
> involved. I don't make that claim in any other context; I don't
> have any evidence one way or the other. For that matter, I don't
> know that TM was ever less than open about its scientific studies
> to begin with, only that it *did* say misleading things about
> "levitation."
My error, sorry.
Certainly some ex-TM'rs have had some very bad
things to say about past TM research, but there
is always problem of knowing how much of that
is "sour grapes".
>
> <snip>
> > Wasn't the intent of the article to demonstrate
> > that they do use TM and MAV and this results in
> > an absolute decrease in health costs? (Or am I
> > missing something obvious again?)
>
> Yes, you're missing something. Maybe it wasn't obvious, but the
> hypothesis was that *TM practice* decreased health care
> utilization. The study compared the utilization statistics on
> people before and after they had learned TM.
>
I see, so MAV wasn't involved in it? When was the
study done and when did MAV come out?
<hack/>
> > If this is the case, why wouldn't the article in
> > question contain this information and not be subject
> > to being faulted for lack of complete cost coverage,
> > particularly if it had been rejected previously for
> > this reason?
>
> ?? Lawson's pointing out that it's highly unlikely the subjects
> would have spent enough on MAV to make a significant difference
> in the figures.
>
> You raise a good point in one respect: if the fact that the fee
> to learn TM wasn't included in the health care utilization costs
> was such a "fatal flaw," you'd think it would have been pointed
> out to the authors when they first submitted the article, and
> that this flaw would have been remedied by the second
> submission--if they didn't want to figure this in, and they knew
> JAMA considered it a fatal flaw, why would they bother to
> resubmit it?
<hack/>
Also a good question. I can think of any number
of possible reasons, but they would all be just
speculation.
SantyClz
>
> SantyClz <sant...@bellfnordsouth.net> said:
>
<hack/>
> >When you make the claim (not specifically the one above)
> >about TM related studies, do you include only studies
> >made since (paraphrase) "TM has made significant strides
> >towards openness", as you seem to believe that any data
> >from before that time is suspect at best?
>
> I don't believe that that was me. However, the research HAS gotten better
> for many different reasons, including the fact that they are now using
> public money to do the research. The specific study that I am referring to
> was a retrospective of health-care utilization of an insurance policy that
> was only available to TMers.
You are right, that was Judy's, sorry.
<hack/>
> Am J Health Promot 1996 Jan-Feb;10(3):208-16
>
> The impact of the transcendental meditation program on government payments
> to physicians in Quebec.
>
> Herron RE, Hillis SL, Mandarino JV, Orme-Johnson DW, Walton KG
>
> Health Policy Development, Institute of Science, Technology and Public
> Policy, Maharishi University of Management, Fairfield, IA 52557, USA.
>
> PURPOSE: This study evaluated whether governmental medical payments in
> Quebec were affected by the Transcendental Meditation (TM) technique.
> DESIGN: This retrospective study used a pre- and postintervention design in
> which government payments for physicians' services were reviewed for 3
> years before and up to 7 years after subjects started the technique.
<hack/>
>RESULTS:
> During the 3 years before starting the TM program, the adjusted payments to
> physicians for treating the subjects did not change significantly. After
> beginning TM practice, subjects' adjusted expenses declined significantly.
> The several methods used to assess the rate of decline showed estimates
> ranging from 5% to 7% annually.
Does this mean that each year they were 5 to 7% lower than
the estimate or that during the last of the 7 years the
average had dropped to 30-40% below expectations?
Any idea of what 5% was in terms of $?
Based on my reading, only payments to the Drs. were
considered, not cost of medication, hospitalization,
etc., is that correct?
Lawson English
>Does this mean that each year they were 5 to 7% lower than
>the estimate or that during the last of the 7 years the
>average had dropped to 30-40% below expectations?
>
>Any idea of what 5% was in terms of $?
>
>Based on my reading, only payments to the Drs. were
>considered, not cost of medication, hospitalization,
>etc., is that correct?
Not certain from this abstract and I've never seen the original. If you are
REALLY interested,
Reprints of individual papers may be ordered through the Institute for
Scientific Research, Maharishi University of Management, Fairfield, IA
52557
Andrew's version of the paper may contain the answers, also. It would be
interesting to compare what he has with what was eventually published.
Andrew Skolnick
>
> Judy Stein wrote:
> >
> > In article <37910692...@bellfnordsouth.net>,
> > SantyClz <sant...@bellfnordsouth.net> wrote:
> >
> >
> <hack/>
> > > So where can we get income information on AAAM,
> > > MAPI, et. al. (and TM, Inc.)?
> >
> > I believe there have recently been new regulations instituted
> > requiring the records of nonprofits to be made open to public
> > inspection. Don't know when exactly they go into effect, but my
> > impression is it should be within the year. Don't know whether
> > you'd contact the TM organization or the IRS to obtain the
> > records.
> >
> > I also don't know that you could get the income information on
> > MAPI Inc., since that *is* a for-profit company. Presumably you
> > could find out how much of that income went to its nonprofit
> > owner, however.
>
> Most (all?) publicly owned companies make an annual report
> to their shareholders. Are AAAM, MAPI, TM Inc., etc. publicly
> or privately held? Are the others legally divisions of TM Inc.?
>
> >
> > <snip>
> > > about TM related studies, do you include only studies
> > > made since (paraphrase) "TM has made significant strides
> > > towards openness", as you seem to believe that any data
> > > from before that time is suspect at best?
> >
> > was limited to the matter of openness about what Yogic Flying
> > involved. I don't make that claim in any other context; I don't
> > have any evidence one way or the other. For that matter, I don't
> > know that TM was ever less than open about its scientific studies
> > to begin with, only that it *did* say misleading things about
> > "levitation."
>
> My error, sorry.
>
> Certainly some ex-TM'rs have had some very bad
> things to say about past TM research, but there
> is always problem of knowing how much of that
> is "sour grapes".
>
> >
> > <snip>
> > > Wasn't the intent of the article to demonstrate
> > > that they do use TM and MAV and this results in
> > > an absolute decrease in health costs? (Or am I
> > > missing something obvious again?)
> >
> > Yes, you're missing something. Maybe it wasn't obvious, but the
> > hypothesis was that *TM practice* decreased health care
> > utilization. The study compared the utilization statistics on
> > people before and after they had learned TM.
> >
>
> I see, so MAV wasn't involved in it? When was the
> study done and when did MAV come out?
I really don't have the time to deal with all the smoke and chaff Judy
and Lawson are ejecting to hide the problems with this study. Yes, MAV
use was certainly involved, but was its use and costs were not measured
in this study. The TMers in the study began meditating in the years
1983-1989. MAV remedies were already introduced and were being marketed
intensely among TMers in that period. The study did not consider MAV use
at all. It only looked at Canadian government payments to physician for
patients who became TM meditators, practicing for 2 to 8 years. MAV
expenses, of course, are not reimbursed. And of course, there was the
cost of learning TM (more than $500 here in the US) and costs of
advanced training that many of the people in the study also took to
promote their health. Some of those courses cost hundreds or even
thousands of US dollars each.
Judy and Lawson are addicted to the habit of offering baseless
assumptions as facts. For example, Judy in one of her posts re this
study claimed that the fatal flaws I mentioned were not fatal flaws or
else they would have been pointed out to the authors and the authors
would have corrected them in their second submission. That is false. I
have no doubt that the flaws were pointed out. The authors couldn't fix
them. How could they? Had they gone back to the drawing board and redone
their study, it would have shown no savings once they factored in the
costs for initial TM, advanced training, and MAV remedies. For example,
the first year after TM initiation, there was a mean decrease among 677
TMers of only about $10 (Canadian 1990 dollars = about $6 or $7 US
dollars). In the 6th year post-initiation (the one with the lowest mean
expenditure) physician payments for 36 TMers was about $65 (about
$40-$50 US) less.
The cost of the basic TM instruction, if counted in the health care
costs, would have wiped out all apparent savings. Furthermore, if the
study considered the cost of just ONE herbal product that TMers are all
encouraged to take daily (about $900 US per year), or any of the other
TM health remedies -- many of which cost thousands of dollars -- the
costs of health care almost certainly increased significantly. You can
see why the fatal flaw was not repairable. Hell, if only 5 or 6 of the
677 meditators bought Maharishi Amrit Kalash as they were told to, that
alone would have erased the entire mean "savings" for the first year!
The entire mean savings for the 6th year post-initiation of about $65
(Candian 1990 dollars) for each of the 36 meditations would have been
exceded by just 3 of the meditators using this one MAV product! The
costs of TM initiation, advanced techniques, and other MAV products if
also considered would have driven the costs much much higher.
And despite the chaff ejected by the apologists, TMers are persuaded to
rely on MAV instead of conventional medicine. The study did not make any
effort to measure or account for this confounding factor. In the very
least, it was necessary for the study to show why all the TM propaganda
against conventional medicine DID not have an effect on this population
of TMers. The study didn't even discuss the problem. It was a fatal
flaw. And like the other, it could not be corrected.
Another flaw I didn't mention is TMer bias. Subjects were TMers who
volunteered to take part in this study to show the effectiveness of TM
in reducing health care costs. People who learned TM at the centers in
this study, who were displeased with TM because of illness or other
problems, may not have taken part. This study population was almost
certainly a biased one. Of course, this flaw also was not discussed in
the study.
> <hack/>
> > > If this is the case, why wouldn't the article in
> > > question contain this information and not be subject
> > > to being faulted for lack of complete cost coverage,
> > > particularly if it had been rejected previously for
> > > this reason?
> >
> > ?? Lawson's pointing out that it's highly unlikely the subjects
> > would have spent enough on MAV to make a significant difference
> > in the figures.
> >
That, of course, is clearly nonsense. The TMers were meditators
recruited at TM centers and through the TM movement's newsletters. Many
members of the TM movement take TM advanced courses costing thousands of
US dollars and use expensive MAV products. The study made NO mention of
this and totally ignored this confounding fatal flaw.
It is not enough for authors of a study to rely on future apologists
like Judy and Lawson to cover up the study's flaws with baseless
presumptions. The authors are expected to address all possible
confounding factors. Failure do so can lead to their manuscript's
rejection.
> > You raise a good point in one respect: if the fact that the fee
> > to learn TM wasn't included in the health care utilization costs
> > was such a "fatal flaw," you'd think it would have been pointed
> > out to the authors when they first submitted the article, and
> > that this flaw would have been remedied by the second
> > submission--if they didn't want to figure this in, and they knew
> > JAMA considered it a fatal flaw, why would they bother to
> > resubmit it?
> <hack/>
>
> Also a good question. I can think of any number
> of possible reasons, but they would all be just
> speculation.
Could it be that the authors thought the threat of a $194 million law
suit against the editor would make the flaws vanish?
The flaws, of course, didn't vanish and the article was rejected.
Andrew Skolnick
> <hack/>
> > Am J Health Promot 1996 Jan-Feb;10(3):208-16
> >
> > The impact of the transcendental meditation program on government payments
> > to physicians in Quebec.
> >
> > Herron RE, Hillis SL, Mandarino JV, Orme-Johnson DW, Walton KG
> >
> > Health Policy Development, Institute of Science, Technology and Public
> > Policy, Maharishi University of Management, Fairfield, IA 52557, USA.
> >
> > PURPOSE: This study evaluated whether governmental medical payments in
> > Quebec were affected by the Transcendental Meditation (TM) technique.
> > DESIGN: This retrospective study used a pre- and postintervention design in
> > which government payments for physicians' services were reviewed for 3
> > years before and up to 7 years after subjects started the technique.
> <hack/>
> >RESULTS:
> > During the 3 years before starting the TM program, the adjusted payments to
> > physicians for treating the subjects did not change significantly. After
> > beginning TM practice, subjects' adjusted expenses declined significantly.
> > The several methods used to assess the rate of decline showed estimates
> > ranging from 5% to 7% annually.
>
> Does this mean that each year they were 5 to 7% lower than
> the estimate or that during the last of the 7 years the
> average had dropped to 30-40% below expectations?
>
> Any idea of what 5% was in terms of $?
>
See my previous post for the estimated savings in Canadian dollars (and
approx. US dollar costs). They were talking about a relatively small
mean difference -- between about $7 to about $50 US a year for each of
the meditators.
> Based on my reading, only payments to the Drs. were
> considered, not cost of medication, hospitalization,
> etc., is that correct?
Correct. The study measured only government payments to physicians. It
did not include costs for medication, hospitilization, etc. And it did
not include ANY of the costs of THE intervention that the study was
supposed to be testing! -- ie. the costs for TM initiation, advanced
techniques, and Maharishi Ayur-Veda remedies and treatments.
Great study, huh? A study that compares the health care costs before
intervention X and after internvention X. Only it doesn't bother to even
mention the costs of intervention X!
But what can you expect from researchers who say they can divert
hurricanes and end wars by bouncing on their butts while meditating?
I suspect the authors believed the threat of the $194 million law suit
against the editor would have been enough to get this seriously flawed
article published in JAMA. It was not.
Andrew Skolnick
>
> Andrew Skolnick wrote:
> >
> > SantyClz wrote:
<snipped>
> One would assume that any article submitted to JAMA
> would be considered for publication using JAMA's
> publication rules and procedures. Is this not the
> case?
Yes.
> Was some sort of specific agreement made with Dr's
> Chopra et. al. about the handling of the submission
> from them or from the TM organization? (I mean
> something like "We agree to give priority to
> publishing an article from... as long as it meets
> our publication rules and if we do publish they
> will agree not to renew or continue the lawsuit.")
JAMA agreed that the manuscript would receive normal editorial review.
The TM plaintiffs agreed to sign an agreement dismissing the suit with
prejudice if the article was published.
The article, which was twice rejected, was not published in JAMA.
> <hack/>
> > > Does anyone have a copy of the rejected article?
> >
> > I do. But it is important to point out that I did not obtain the article
> > through JAMA. I was pretty much cut off from AMA and TM negotiations
> > after I told the AMA that I would never agree to any settlement that was
> > secret or that involved any form of censorship. My attorney and I
> > threatened to separate our suit if the AMA went along with the
> > plaintiff's demands for secrecy and censorship.
> >
> <hack/>
>
> Since you received it as you did, could you send me
> a copy?
Sorry, no. I suspect the copyright is owned by the journal that
published it. I don't have permission to copy it for others. You may be
able to get a copy from MUM. However, I've only seen the published
abstract so I can't say whether the published study is different from
the one submitted to JAMA about 3 years earlier.
Andrew Skolnick
>
> Why did Chopra disassociate himself with/leave the TM movement??
The true reasons are probably known only to Chopra and Maharishi.
There's been much speculation and Chopra has given several reasons not
involving the JAMA article or lawsuit. There is an interview with Chopra
on the Trancenet Web site in which he cites his reasons. However, I've
learned to never trust anything Chopra says.
Andrew Skolnick
>
> SantyClz <sant...@bellfnordsouth.net> said:
>
> >Lawson English wrote:
> >>
> >> >Certainly. The study compared the Canadian government's expenditures
> >for
> >> >health care for people before and after they became TM meditators. It
> >> >found that the government medical expenditures were less following
> >their
> >> >taking up TM.
<snipped>
Lawson's assumption that only 10% of those who learned TM in the US are
still practicing it has nothing to do with the Canadian study. The study
recruited TM practitioners attending TM center events and through TM
movement's newsletters.
> >If this is the case, why wouldn't the article in
> >question contain this information and not be subject
> >to being faulted for lack of complete cost coverage,
> >particularly if it had been rejected previously for
> >this reason?
Amazing huh? A study that compares health care costs before and after
intervention X but doesn't bother to measure or even mention any of the
costs of intervention X!
Such is the quality of TM research.
Andrew Skolnick
>
> >Certainly. The study compared the Canadian government's expenditures for
> >health care for people before and after they became TM meditators. It
> >found that the government medical expenditures were less following their
> >taking up TM.
> >
> >The two most fatal flaws I can remember are these: Members of the TM
> >movement tend to rely on Maharishi Ayur-Veda treatments rather than on
> >conventional medical services, therefore the decline in government
> >health care expenditures may be explained by the TMers' bias against
> >conventional medicine rather than by hypothetical health benefits of TM.
>
> Documented evidence for this? Fact is, only a handful of people, regardless
> of whether or not they practice TM, ever bother with any aspect of MAV.
Oh, yeah? And where is your documented evidence for this? Of course, we
were not talking about the percentage of non-TMers who buy MAV products.
We were talking about the percentage of active TMers who use MAV
products.
Lawson now wants us to believe that TMers don't buy MAV products. Yeah,
right.
> There have been about 2 million people who learned TM in the USA in the
> last 30 years. If even a significant (10%) of them were purchasing MAV
> products and services, MAPI and Maharishi Ayurveda Prevention Centers would
> be EXTREMELY profitable.
Hoo boy, typical Lawson chaff.
Of the 2 million who learned TM in the USA ages ago, only a small
percentage continue to practice it and a much smaller percentage are
active in TM programs. The Candian study recruited TM practitioners from
those participating at TM centers and receiving the TM movement's
newsletters. Subjects were volunteers. The study was obviously biased
toward those who were active meditators and who believed that TM works.
> I mean, as you pointed out, the MAK concoctions
> cost about $900/year. If 200,000 people were taking MAK, the gross revenues
> for MAPI for MAK alone would be nearly $200 MILLION/year. In fact, the last
> time I talked to anyone at MAPI about this (about 5 years ago, I believe),
> they were bragging that they had about 5-10,000 people taking MAK
> regularly.
Come off of it Lawson. The Maharishi doesn't have 200,000 followers.
5000 to 10,000 sounds about in the ball park for the number of devout
TMers in the U.S.
> Add in the $1000/quarter pancharkarma treatments, and you would get another
> $800 million/year, yielding gross revenues of about $1 billion/year.
Far fewer TMers go for the panchakarma treatments because of the great
cost and time required.
But the question is not what is the total number of TMers in the U.S.
who go for TM panchakarma treamtents. The question is how many TMers in
the Canadian study went for the expensive panchakarma treaments. That
question of course was not answered or even asked by the authors of the
study.
Lawson doesn't want to address the fact that if even 2 or 3 of the
nearly 700 TMers in the Canadian study went for panchakarma treaments as
prescribed by TM, their cost would have completely erased the health
care cost savings TM researchers were claiming for TM.
For the Candian study to be valid, Lawson would have to prove that none
of the nearly 700 TM practitioners use Maharishi Amrit Kalash or other
MAV products or go for panchakarma treatments as TM prescribes. He would
also have to prove that the nearly 700 TMers didn't pay to learn TM
because the researchers did not include that cost in their study either.
Imagine! A medical study of the health care cost savings of an
intervention that did not include or even discuss the cost of the
intervention!
TM science. You gotta love it for the entertainment, if nothing else.
> Finally, the assumption is that TMers do NOT use Western medicine, which is
> just plain wrong.
Again, Lawson SIMS shuffles the words. The hypothesis was that TMers
active in the movement are encouraged to use Maharishi Ayur-Veda
remedies and therefore many use conventional medical care less than they
did before becoming involved with the TM movement.
That is a hypothesis that can neither be ignored by the authors of the
study nor dismissed by SIMS shuffling as Lawson is doing here.
<snipped>
> >Second, the comparisons were invalid: they did not include the costs to
> >learn TM and the costs of TM remedies. If you're going to compare the
> >cost benefits between alternative approaches you must include the costs
> >of both approaches. The TM paper only considered the costs of convential
> >medical care. It was a pathetic attempt.
>
> But there is no evidence that rank-and-file TMers use MAV significantly
> more than they use Western medicine
More SIMS shuffling by Lawson. The question is not whether the TMers in
the Candian study used MORE or less MAV remedies than conventional
medical care. The question is how much MAV did they use and what were
the costs of this care. This question was not answered of even discussed
in the TM study.
> , and definitive evidence that they do
> NOT use MAV much, if at all. Otherwise, the MAV clinics and MAPI would be
> making tons of money, and they are not.
Lawson provides no data to back up his claims. Where are his data that
the Canadian TMers did not use MAV products or get MAV treatments?
In one of his more bizarre arguments, he seems to claim that the
Canadian TMers weren't using MAV treatments or remedies because MAV
clinics and MAPI are not making tons of money.
(Not that it would be relevant, it would have been more interesting if
Lawson provided financial figures for MAPI's income of and the income of
MAV clinics rather than hoping we will take his word for the claim that
MAV clinics and MAPI are experiencing hard times.)
<snipped>
> >It took about three years after JAMA rejected the manuscript for the
> >authors to get the paper published in a minor medical publication.
> >
>
> How long does it usually take for a submitted article to reach publication?
Good articles or bad ones? Good articles can be published in a matter of
months. It also depends on the publication. Some publications are
published weekly, some monthly, some less frequently. Some have much
longer lead times.
For example, "Letter from New Delhi" was submitted in Jan. 1991 and
published in the May 22/29, 1991 issue of JAMA.
Unfortunately, the editors didn't realize how bad that article was.
Otherwise, they would have taken a lot longer to publish it. A Hell of
lot longer. Matter of fact, the climate of Hell would have greatly
improved by the time the article would would be published in JAMA, had
the truth been known.
Lawson English
>Had they gone back to the drawing board and redone
>their study, it would have shown no savings once they factored in the
>costs for initial TM, advanced training, and MAV remedies. For example,
>the first year after TM initiation, there was a mean decrease among 677
>TMers of only about $10 (Canadian 1990 dollars = about $6 or $7 US
>dollars). In the 6th year post-initiation (the one with the lowest mean
>expenditure) physician payments for 36 TMers was about $65 (about
>$40-$50 US) less.
Of course, at least in the abstract I found on medline, no claim was made
of "saving" money, only that fewer dollars had been spent on physicians.
>
>The cost of the basic TM instruction, if counted in the health care
>costs, would have wiped out all apparent savings. Furthermore, if the
>study considered the cost of just ONE herbal product that TMers are all
>encouraged to take daily (about $900 US per year), or any of the other
>TM health remedies -- many of which cost thousands of dollars -- the
>costs of health care almost certainly increased significantly. You can
>see why the fatal flaw was not repairable. Hell, if only 5 or 6 of the
>677 meditators bought Maharishi Amrit Kalash as they were told to, that
>alone would have erased the entire mean "savings" for the first year!
>
So? That's true of any therapy or treatment with a high initial outlay. You
have to examine the savings over a longer period. Besides, the benefits of
MAK and TM may well go beyond what would be measured in this particular
study. For instance, MAK has a wakeful effect, and TM itself reduces my
required sleeping hours from 9 down to 6, giving ME a net savings of 1.5
hours, not to mention it improves my emotional outlook, etc.
Such things couldn't be measured by this kind of study, but they can count
as a *factor* in determining the cost/benefit analysis of TM/MAV use.
>The entire mean savings for the 6th year post-initiation of about $65
>(Candian 1990 dollars) for each of the 36 meditations would have been
>exceded by just 3 of the meditators using this one MAV product! The
>costs of TM initiation, advanced techniques, and other MAV products if
>also considered would have driven the costs much much higher.
>
And the benefits, assuming there are any, derived from participating in
those extra things might have been worth it for those participating in
areas *besides* the one of physician's utilization. If my interpretation of
Andrew's remarks is correct, the study asserted that after 5 years, the
mean physician's use was done 25-35%. If that was a figure that reflects
*health* rather than some evil TM plot to keep TMers from using western
medicine, the actual long-term benefits to everyone save physicians should
be obvious.
>And despite the chaff ejected by the apologists, TMers are persuaded to
>rely on MAV instead of conventional medicine.
*SOME* are. Most are not. Do the math, Andrew. There's no way that MAPI
could be distributing millions of bottles of MAK each year without it
showing in some way.
The study did not make any
>effort to measure or account for this confounding factor. In the very
>least, it was necessary for the study to show why all the TM propaganda
>against conventional medicine DID not have an effect on this population
>of TMers.
Which propaganda was that?
The study didn't even discuss the problem. It was a fatal
>flaw. And like the other, it could not be corrected.
Oooh.
>
>Another flaw I didn't mention is TMer bias. Subjects were TMers who
>volunteered to take part in this study to show the effectiveness of TM
>in reducing health care costs. People who learned TM at the centers in
>this study, who were displeased with TM because of illness or other
>problems, may not have taken part. This study population was almost
>certainly a biased one. Of course, this flaw also was not discussed in
>the study.
>
Huh. I think that the abstract covered all the bases in a generic sort of
way by simply pointing out that it couldn't use a control group or control
for any factors due to the nature of the survey.
Never said that it was a *good* study, Andrew, only that your claim that
some substantial portion of TMers use other MAV strategies is wrong.
OTOH, the claim that a substantial portion of MAV-users [nearly all] also
use TM is certainly correct.
Lawson English
>Correct. The study measured only government payments to physicians. It
>
>did not include costs for medication, hospitilization, etc. And it did
>not include ANY of the costs of THE intervention that the study was
>supposed to be testing! -- ie. the costs for TM initiation, advanced
>techniques, and Maharishi Ayur-Veda remedies and treatments.
>
>Great study, huh? A study that compares the health care costs before
>intervention X and after internvention X. Only it doesn't bother to even
>mention the costs of intervention X!
Er, so?
Canadians might not care about the COST of going to a physician because
most/all of that cost is covered by national health insurance (I think).
However, the fact that they might go to a physican 50% less *often* after 7
years of TM practice might be quite attractive to them, AND to the
government.
Don't forget that utilization of physicians also implies sick-leave,
resulting in lower worker productivity and other related outcomes. If (IF)
the lowered utilization of physicians was genuinely related to TM making
the TMers stay well, then this would make it very attractive to business,
government and individuals.
But Andrew is leaving these implications out of his cost-benefits analysis
and suggesting that the only useful criteria is whether TM cost less than
it saved.
Shows his backgroun as a JAMA assistant editor, I think.
Lawson English
>Lawson's assumption that only 10% of those who learned TM in the US are
>still practicing it has nothing to do with the Canadian study. The study
>recruited TM practitioners attending TM center events and through TM
>movement's newsletters.
Ah, good point, and they WOULD tend to be ones taking MAK and other stuff.
Hadn't noticed that, thanks. I had assumed that this was more a study of
the "generic" TMer, and didn't notice the extremely skewed population that
this had come from. Your points are far more important in this context and
I withdraw my counter-points since a significant portion of them WOULD
likely be taking MAK, etc.
Lawson English
>There is an interview with Chopra
>on the Trancenet Web site in which he cites his reasons. However, I've
>learned to never trust anything Chopra says.
>
That exchange has a ring of truth since it shows Chopra was being a rather
paranoid individual who STILL doesn't understand that his interview is
revealing him as being paranoid.
Lawson English
>Oh, yeah? And where is your documented evidence for this? Of course, we
>were not talking about the percentage of non-TMers who buy MAV products.
>We were talking about the percentage of active TMers who use MAV
>products.
>
>Lawson now wants us to believe that TMers don't buy MAV products. Yeah,
>right.
>
Most do not. However, the sample was drawn (missed this) from people who
attended the TM center regularly, so likely they WERE using MAV in some
form.
SOrry.
Lawson English
>Lawson doesn't want to address the fact that if even 2 or 3 of the
>nearly 700 TMers in the Canadian study went for panchakarma treaments as
>prescribed by TM, their cost would have completely erased the health
>care cost savings TM researchers were claiming for TM.
Lawson wasn't thinking things through because he missed (or failed to
consider or something <snore> that the TM population considered was
extremely biased).
However, your point about costs fails to consider the fact that TM and
other MAV techniques are *prevention* oriented. I'd rather pay a little
more for prevention and avoid seeing the doctor in the first place (didn't
work in the case of my current earache, but I've been getting 4 hours/night
of sleep while adjusting to a new medicine, so that hopefully is a one-time
bad deal).
SantyClz
>
<massive hack/>
> MAV remedies were already introduced and were being marketed
> intensely among TMers in that period. The study did not consider MAV use
> at all. It only looked at Canadian government payments to physician for
> patients who became TM meditators, practicing for 2 to 8 years. MAV
> expenses, of course, are not reimbursed. And of course, there was the
> cost of learning TM (more than $500 here in the US) and costs of
> advanced training that many of the people in the study also took to
> promote their health. Some of those courses cost hundreds or even
> thousands of US dollars each.
Obviously of concern to a study of "health costs".
Equally obviously not of concern to a study of
"physician payments".[1]
<hack/>
> For example,
> the first year after TM initiation, there was a mean decrease among 677
> TMers of only about $10 (Canadian 1990 dollars = about $6 or $7 US
> dollars). In the 6th year post-initiation (the one with the lowest mean
> expenditure) physician payments for 36 TMers was about $65 (about
> $40-$50 US) less.
Well, I've already demonstrated my ignorance of
statistics, here I get to show I can't do simple
arithmetic:
(approximate people in study) 700 x $7. = $4,900. (US)
For non-surgical medicine, I believe the most expensive
payment to the Dr. is the annual physical. The last
time I had one it cost about $900.
$4,900 / 900 = 5.44 (4's all the way down)
If about 5 people chose to get pulse diagnosis (I
assume that would not have been covered) versus a
*regular* physical (I assume that would be covered)
-- that would represent 0.8% of the sample group.
Increasing that by an additional 0.8%/year for 6
additional years would give us 5.6% of the sample
group, well within what Lawson gave in another
post as (paraphrase) "less than 10% of TM'rs
do/would use MAV".
As was pointed out later in this post, there is a
significant likelihood that this particular group
of TM'rs could be considered more likely than
a random sample of TM'rs to be using MAV.
So whether this study had any significance whatsoever
would depend on what percentage of TM/MAV users
were in the study and whether and by how much they
decrease their reliance on "traditional" medicine.
I doubt we will ever get an authoritative answer
to that.
These do appear to be "fatal flaws" to me.
<extreme hack/>
Joe Shair
1: I can think of at least one reason why JAMA,
The Journal of the American Medical Association,
might require *exceptional* rigor in a study
dealing with reducing payments to physicians.
--
G! d? s+:+ a++ C+++ U--- P L E-- W+ N* w PS+++
PE Y+ PGP- t+ 5 X+ R* tv-- b+++ G e h+ y+++(**)
SantyClz
>
> SantyClz wrote:
> >
> > Andrew Skolnick wrote:
> > >
> > > SantyClz wrote:
>
> <snipped>
>
> > One would assume that any article submitted to JAMA
> > would be considered for publication using JAMA's
> > publication rules and procedures. Is this not the
> > case?
>
> Yes.
>
> > Was some sort of specific agreement made with Dr's
> > Chopra et. al. about the handling of the submission
> > from them or from the TM organization? (I mean
> > something like "We agree to give priority to
> > publishing an article from... as long as it meets
> > our publication rules and if we do publish they
> > will agree not to renew or continue the lawsuit.")
>
> JAMA agreed that the manuscript would receive normal editorial review.
> The TM plaintiffs agreed to sign an agreement dismissing the suit with
> prejudice if the article was published.
>
> The article, which was twice rejected, was not published in JAMA.
>
It sounds as if it were a completely one-sided
agreement. "We'll do what we would have done
anyway and you'll ...". Or had JAMA said something
about not accepting any more submissions from
Dr. Chopra, et. al.? Something seems to be
missing here.
<hack/>
> > Since you received it as you did, could you send me
> > a copy?
>
> Sorry, no.
<hack/>
OK, thanks anyway.
Joe Shair
Judy Stein
Andrew Skolnick <asko...@spam.block.mindspring.com> wrote:
<snip>
> Lawson's assumption that only 10% of those who learned TM in the US are
> still practicing it has nothing to do with the Canadian study.
Yes, it certainly does. It has to do with the likelihood of
TMers spending sufficient money on MAV to have neutralized the
saving in physician visits.
But that is only Andrew's red herring anyway.
[SntyClz wrote:]
> > >If this is the case, why wouldn't the article in
> > >question contain this information and not be subject
> > >to being faulted for lack of complete cost coverage,
> > >particularly if it had been rejected previously for
> > >this reason?
>
> Amazing huh? A study that compares health care costs before and after
> intervention X but doesn't bother to measure or even mention any of the
> costs of intervention X!
Notice that this was the same question I asked in a previous
post, which Andrew falsely characterized as a "claim."
Judy Stein
"Lawson English" <eng...@primenet.com> wrote:
> Andrew Skolnick <asko...@spam.block.mindspring.com> said:
>
> >Lawson's assumption that only 10% of those who learned TM in the US are
> >still practicing it has nothing to do with the Canadian study. The study
> >recruited TM practitioners attending TM center events and through TM
> >movement's newsletters.
>
> Ah, good point, and they WOULD tend to be ones taking MAK and
> other stuff.
Not necessarily, Lawson. First, everyone who learns TM is sent
its newsletters.
Second, it looks like Andrew may be playing with words again.
First he said the meditators were "recruited at TM centers."
Then after he was challenged about whether the subjects would be
expected to be heavy users of MAV products, he changed it to "TM
practitioners attending TM center events." And then in a
subsquent post he racheted it up another notch, saying that the
study "recruited TM practitioners from those participating at TM
centers" (in addition, in all cases, to receiving the
newsletter).
Whether the TMers recruited through the centers were "involved in
the movement," as Andrew claims, would depend on why they were at
the center. For example, even casual meditators may visit the
center occasionally, especially in the first year after they've
learned, for a checking session, without being involved in the
movement. Even many of the people who attend an advanced lecture
aren't involved in the movement. TMers may accompany a friend to
an introductory lecture without being involved in the movement.
There is no hard-and-fast correlation between simply having been
at a TM center while recruitment was going on and being more
likely to spend money on Maharishi Ayur-Veda products or
services.
And as noted, receiving a newsletter is an indication only that
the person has learned TM and thus has been put on the mailing
list.
So unless Andrew can document that some significant proportion of
the subjects were recruited while attending, say, a seasonal
celebration or some other event that *only* someone involved with
the movement would be likely to have an interest in (and I
remember going to one seasonal celebration just out of
curiosity--I loathed it and never went to another), or were
recruited from among those who frequently showed up at the
center, his claim is without foundation.
But Andrew's whole bit about the costs of TM and MAV is a red
herring in any case, as I've explained in other posts.
Judy Stein
"Lawson English" <eng...@primenet.com> wrote:
[Andrew wrote:]
> >Lawson now wants us to believe that TMers don't buy MAV products. Yeah,
> >right.
>
> Most do not. However, the sample was drawn (missed this) from people who
> attended the TM center regularly, so likely they WERE using MAV in some
> form.
Geez. Not even Andrew said anything about "attending the TM
center regularly," Lawson. Now *you're* ratcheting it up.
All they had to do to be recruited for the study was to show up
at the center *once*.
Judy Stein
"Lawson English" <eng...@primenet.com> wrote:
> Judy Stein <jst...@panix.com> said:
>
> >You raise a good point in one respect: if the fact that the fee
> >to learn TM wasn't included in the health care utilization costs
> >was such a "fatal flaw," you'd think it would have been pointed
> >out to the authors when they first submitted the article, and
> >that this flaw would have been remedied by the second
> >submission--if they didn't want to figure this in, and they knew
> >JAMA considered it a fatal flaw, why would they bother to
> >resubmit it?
>
> It wasn't that ground-breaking a study in the first place,
The abstract you posted makes that clear!
and the
> conclusion wasn't that it had saved anyone money (at least the abstract
> didn't say that) but that the documented average health care cost in the
> TMers declined about 5-7% per year for the period of the study.
I think the key factor was that the results weren't generalizable
because the subjects were self-selected and there was no control
group (sorta like the "German study").
The "fatal flaw" was simply that the results didn't mean much. I
doubt its rejection at JAMA had anything to do with editorial
suspicion that these folks had turned their backs on modern
medicine and embraced Maharishi Ayur-Veda upon learning TM, and
that the resulting costs of all this purported MAV therapy
weren't figured in.
I suspect Andrew made that up (remember he wasn't privy to the
reasons for the study's rejection). JAMA's editors are smarter
than that.
My guess is that the first version was rejected because the
study's limitations weren't made clear enough, and the second
version was rejected because once the limitations were made
clear, the results weren't sufficiently interesting to publish.
Judy Stein
Andrew Skolnick <asko...@spam.block.mindspring.com> wrote:
<snip>
> Correct. The study measured only government payments to physicians. It
> did not include costs for medication, hospitilization, etc. And it did
> not include ANY of the costs of THE intervention that the study was
> supposed to be testing! -- ie. the costs for TM initiation, advanced
> techniques, and Maharishi Ayur-Veda remedies and treatments.
Big fat red herring, Andrew. The study was not, as you know,
comparing the costs of the intervention with the nonintervention
costs. Let's look at the purpose of the study again:
PURPOSE: This study evaluated whether governmental medical
payments in Quebec were affected by the Transcendental Meditation
(TM) technique.
> Great study, huh? A study that compares the health care costs before
> intervention X and after internvention X. Only it doesn't bother to even
> mention the costs of intervention X!
Right. That wouldn't have been relevant, as you know, since the
study was evaluating only the costs to the government, not the
costs to the patients.
> I suspect the authors believed the threat of the $194 million law suit
> against the editor would have been enough to get this seriously flawed
> article published in JAMA. It was not.
It wasn't "flawed," it just wasn't of interest to physicians. It
didn't show that TM improved health. All it showed was that the
Canadian government didn't have to pay as much for the physician
care of that particular group of TMers.
There are plenty of other studies, of course, showing that TM
*does* improve health, which no doubt were cited in the study.
But that wasn't what the study was attempting to demonstrate.
Nor was it attempting to demonstrate that *health care costs* are
lower among those practicing TM, or even among this group of
TMers. That would, of course, have to be a vastly more
complicated study with a lot of ambiguities: if you include the
costs of TM and MAV in your comparison, do you also include the
cost of gym membership? Paying more for better quality food?
Installing an air purifier in the home? Etc., etc.
Judy Stein
Andrew Skolnick <asko...@mindspring.com> wrote:
<snip>
> Judy and Lawson are addicted to the habit of offering baseless
> assumptions as facts. For example, Judy in one of her posts re this
> study claimed that the fatal flaws I mentioned were not fatal flaws or
> else they would have been pointed out to the authors and the authors
> would have corrected them in their second submission. That is false.
My God, talk about chaff ejection! I did not *claim* any such
thing. I asked *why* the authors would not have corrected these
purportedly fatal flaws on the second submission. Or if they
couldn't, why they would have even bothered to resubmit it.
Andrew, what the *hell* is the matter with you? Do you think I'm
not going to bother to correct you when you make a blatant
misstatement like this? Do you really think it strengthens your
case against TM when you're found constantly misrepresenting what
TMers say? Especially when you're constantly accusing *them* of
misrepresenting the facts?
Here's what I wrote--Andrew even left the quote in farther down
in the post:
You raise a good point in one respect: if the fact that the fee
to learn TM wasn't included in the health care utilization costs
was such a "fatal flaw," you'd think it would have been pointed
out to the authors when they first submitted the article, and
that this flaw would have been remedied by the second
submission--if they didn't want to figure this in, and they knew
JAMA considered it a fatal flaw, why would they bother to
resubmit it?
> I have no doubt that the flaws were pointed out.
Andrew is guessing. He has no way of knowing whether these were
the flaws that were pointed out.
One thing is for sure, if those *were* the flaws JAMA's editors
pointed out, they totally misunderstood the purpose of the study
as clearly stated in its abstract (at least its abstract as
eventually published):
PURPOSE: This study evaluated whether governmental medical
payments in Quebec were affected by the Transcendental Meditation
(TM) technique.
Not even the cost of learning TM was relevant.
The authors couldn't fix
> them. How could they? Had they gone back to the drawing board and redone
> their study, it would have shown no savings once they factored in the
> costs for initial TM, advanced training, and MAV remedies.
Except that this wasn't what the study was about. It was about
*only* what the government had to pay out. What the patient may
have had to pay out was irrelevant.
<snip>
> Furthermore, if the study considered the cost of just ONE
> herbal product that TMers are all encouraged to take daily (about
> $900 US per year), or any of the other TM health remedies -- many
> of which cost thousands of dollars -- the costs of health care
> almost certainly increased significantly.
But not to the Canadian government, eh, Andrew?
Even though it's a red herring of Andrew's own invention, I want
to address one point:
Andrew here falsely equates the *recommendation* that TMers (and
everybody else) take MAV remedies with the *taking* of those
remedies. Andrew would like folks to believe that TMers
obediently follow every recommendation they're given, including
recommendations that involve the expenditure of more money.
The vast majority don't.
You can
> see why the fatal flaw was not repairable. Hell, if only 5 or 6 of the
> 677 meditators bought Maharishi Amrit Kalash as they were told to, that
> alone would have erased the entire mean "savings" for the first year!
Not to the Canadian government, of course.
> The entire mean savings for the 6th year post-initiation of about $65
> (Candian 1990 dollars) for each of the 36 meditations would have been
> exceded by just 3 of the meditators using this one MAV product! The
> costs of TM initiation, advanced techniques, and other MAV products if
> also considered would have driven the costs much much higher.
But not to the Canadian government.
> And despite the chaff ejected by the apologists, TMers are persuaded to
> rely on MAV instead of conventional medicine.
This flat-out false, deliberately, knowingly, slanderously false.
Of course TMers are encouraged to use MAV, but they are *also*
told explicitly and repeatedly NOT to use it as a substitute for
conventional medicine.
The study did not make any
> effort to measure or account for this confounding factor. In the very
> least, it was necessary for the study to show why all the TM propaganda
> against conventional medicine DID not have an effect on this population
> of TMers.
TM DOES NOT PROPAGANDIZE AGAINST CONVENTIONAL MEDICINE in this
sense. TM does NOT encourage TMers not to use conventional
medicine--to the contrary. TM's objection is to the rigidity of
the medical *establishment* in not being open to complementary
approaches, in focusing on treatment rather than prevention, and
in not paying sufficient attention to the mental/emotional causes
of disease.
> Another flaw I didn't mention is TMer bias. Subjects were TMers who
> volunteered to take part in this study to show the effectiveness of TM
> in reducing health care costs.
Right, the abstract Lawson posted of the published study was
explicit that the sample was self-selected and therefore the
results could not be generalized.
People who learned TM at the centers in
> this study, who were displeased with TM because of illness or other
> problems, may not have taken part.
They certainly wouldn't have taken part if they were no longer
practicing TM on this basis. If they were displeased because
they had become ill, on the other hand, but were still practicing
TM for other reasons, they might well have wanted to be in the
study as a statistical "voice" for the other side.
This study population was almost
> certainly a biased one. Of course, this flaw also was not discussed in
> the study.
It was in the abstract Lawson posted.
> > > > If this is the case, why wouldn't the article in
> > > > question contain this information and not be subject
> > > > to being faulted for lack of complete cost coverage,
> > > > particularly if it had been rejected previously for
> > > > this reason?
> > >
> > > ?? Lawson's pointing out that it's highly unlikely the subjects
> > > would have spent enough on MAV to make a significant difference
> > > in the figures.
>
> That, of course, is clearly nonsense. The TMers were meditators
> recruited at TM centers and through the TM movement's newsletters. Many
> members of the TM movement take TM advanced courses costing thousands of
> US dollars and use expensive MAV products. The study made NO mention of
> this and totally ignored this confounding fatal flaw.
None of this refutes Lawson's point, and the "fatal flaw" wasn't
even an *itty-bitty* flaw because that wasn't the point of the
study.
> It is not enough for authors of a study to rely on future apologists
> like Judy and Lawson to cover up the study's flaws with baseless
> presumptions.
See my other posts in this batch, which I wrote before seeing
this statement from Andrew. The problem wasn't that the study
was flawed per se, it's that the results were very limited and
would not have been of interest to physicians.
The authors are expected to address all possible
> confounding factors. Failure do so can lead to their manuscript's
> rejection.
But none of what Andrew has proposed as "fatal flaws" had
anything to do with the purpose of the study--as he VERY well
knows.
Judy Stein
Andrew Skolnick <asko...@spam.block.mindspring.com> wrote:
> SantyClz wrote:
<snip>
> > Was some sort of specific agreement made with Dr's
> > Chopra et. al. about the handling of the submission
> > from them or from the TM organization? (I mean
> > something like "We agree to give priority to
> > publishing an article from... as long as it meets
> > our publication rules and if we do publish they
> > will agree not to renew or continue the lawsuit.")
>
> JAMA agreed that the manuscript would receive normal editorial review.
As opposed to what, Andrew? What was the "quid"?
> The TM plaintiffs agreed to sign an agreement dismissing the suit with
> prejudice if the article was published.
In return for what, Andrew? Why do you keep avoiding that
crucial point?
<snip>
> > Since you received it as you did, could you send me
> > a copy?
>
> Sorry, no. I suspect the copyright is owned by the journal that
> published it. I don't have permission to copy it for others.
Nobody suggested that you copy the *published* study, Andrew,
only the manuscript you obtained, the one that was rejected by
JAMA.
You may be
> able to get a copy from MUM. However, I've only seen the published
> abstract so I can't say whether the published study is different from
> the one submitted to JAMA about 3 years earlier.
You could tell us whether the abstracts were different, could you
not?
Judy Stein
SantyClz <sant...@bellfnordsouth.net> wrote:
> Judy Stein wrote:
<snip>
> > I also don't know that you could get the income information on
> > MAPI Inc., since that *is* a for-profit company. Presumably you
> > could find out how much of that income went to its nonprofit
> > owner, however.
>
> Most (all?) publicly owned companies make an annual report
> to their shareholders. Are AAAM, MAPI, TM Inc., etc. publicly
> or privately held? Are the others legally divisions of TM Inc.?
TM and AAAM are not-for-profits; AAAM may be a legal division of
TM or it may be nominally independent (Lawson, do you know?).
MAPI is owned by AAAM, as I understand it, and its stock is held
by a trust called Maharishi Ayurveda Foundation.
TM/MAV as a collective corporate entity is structured to maximize
income to the main TM organization, and the implementation of
this structuring is probably the single area in which TM
functions with top efficiency.
But if there's any evidence that any individuals have enriched
themselves from these funds, I sure haven't come across it.
<snip>
> > For the record, the phrase you quote was mine, and the context
> > was limited to the matter of openness about what Yogic Flying
> > involved. I don't make that claim in any other context; I don't
> > have any evidence one way or the other. For that matter, I don't
> > know that TM was ever less than open about its scientific studies
> > to begin with, only that it *did* say misleading things about
> > "levitation."
>
> My error, sorry.
>
> Certainly some ex-TM'rs have had some very bad
> things to say about past TM research, but there
> is always problem of knowing how much of that
> is "sour grapes".
Yup. But as I've said, it wouldn't surprise me to find the
research wasn't squeaky-clean (in the past or currently). As far
as I know, though, again, there is no hard evidence to this
effect. All the charges that have been made that I've seen have
been unverifiable.
<snip>
> > Yes, you're missing something. Maybe it wasn't obvious, but the
> > hypothesis was that *TM practice* decreased health care
> > utilization. The study compared the utilization statistics on
> > people before and after they had learned TM.
>
> I see, so MAV wasn't involved in it? When was the
> study done and when did MAV come out?
I believe the study was done after MAV came out, but it was not
done to demonstrate that those who practice TM use MAV or that
MAV lowers health care costs. (Except in the sense that TM is
considered the primary approach of MAV, but in that case you
wouldn't speak of "TM and MAV," so I assume you've made the
distinction in your question.)
The study was concerned only with TM, in other words. If they'd
wanted to include MAV, it would have been an entirely different
study, with a much smaller group of subjects and a much more
complicated study design.
See, you let Andrew mislead you here. The MAV thing was his red
herring.
<snip>
> > You raise a good point in one respect: if the fact that the fee
> > to learn TM wasn't included in the health care utilization costs
> > was such a "fatal flaw," you'd think it would have been pointed
> > out to the authors when they first submitted the article, and
> > that this flaw would have been remedied by the second
> > submission--if they didn't want to figure this in, and they knew
> > JAMA considered it a fatal flaw, why would they bother to
> > resubmit it?
> <hack/>
>
> Also a good question. I can think of any number
> of possible reasons, but they would all be just
> speculation.
Now that Lawson has posted the abstract, I seriously doubt this
was what JAMA's editors considered to be the "fatal flaw." I
suspect it was simply that because there was no control group and
the study sample was self-selected, the results weren't
generalizable and hence meant little.
It would perhaps have beeen of interest to insurance companies
and government health providers, who are anxious to find ways to
reduce their costs.
Of *enormous* significance to TM, of course, since it would
dearly love to be able to wave lower insurance rates around as an
inducement for people to learn TM, for companies to subsidize TM
instruction for employees, and ultimately for insurance companies
and government health providers to reimburse for or subsidize TM
instruction (some insurance companies already do if it's
prescribed by a physician).
Judy Stein
Andrew Skolnick <asko...@spam.block.mindspring.com> wrote:
> Lawson English wrote:
<snip>
> > Fact is, only a handful of people, regardless of whether or
> > not they practice TM, ever bother with any aspect of MAV.
>
> Oh, yeah? And where is your documented evidence for this? Of course, we
> were not talking about the percentage of non-TMers who buy MAV products.
> We were talking about the percentage of active TMers who use MAV
> products.
>
> Lawson now wants us to believe that TMers don't buy MAV
> products. Yeah, right.
Actually most don't. Where is your documented evidence to the
contrary, Andrew?
> > There have been about 2 million people who learned TM in the
> > USA in the last 30 years. If even a significant (10%) of them
> > were purchasing MAV products and services, MAPI and Maharishi
> > Ayurveda Prevention Centers would be EXTREMELY profitable.
>
> Hoo boy, typical Lawson chaff.
>
> Of the 2 million who learned TM in the USA ages ago, only a small
> percentage continue to practice it
But Andrew doesn't happen to have any actual figures, much less
documentation, for the percentage he claims, which makes that
claim equally as vague and unverifiable as Lawson's claim about
how profitable MAV is.
> and a much smaller percentage are active in TM programs.
Andrew wants readers to believe that all the people recruited for
this study came from this small percentage. But that is an
entirely unfounded assumption; read on.
The Candian study recruited TM practitioners from
> those participating at TM centers and receiving the TM movement's
> newsletters. Subjects were volunteers. The study was obviously biased
> toward those who were active meditators and who believed that TM works.
Active meditators, obviously. If they hadn't been practicing TM,
they wouldn't have qualified as subjects for the study; and
equally obviously, they wouldn't have been practicing TM if they
didn't believe it worked. So both these factors are red herrings
of zero significance, and Andrew knows it.
As the abstract Lawson posted noted explicitly, because the
sample was self-selected, the results couldn't be generalized.
However, *Andrew's* assumption is that TMers who visited TM
centers and received TM newsletters were "devoted" TMers who
would therefore be likely to be using MAV.
Not the case. Even casual meditators may occasionally visit
their local TM center to have their meditation checked; that
doesn't make them "devoted" TMers who are going to avidly spend
money on TM products and services. And TM newsletters are
typically sent to everyone who learns TM, not just the "devoted"
TMers.
For all Andrew knows, some of the participants may have
volunteered because they thought TM's health claims were nonsense
and wanted the fact that their health care utilization didn't go
down after learning TM to be figured into the study.
People don't learn TM *only* because they want to improve their
health. There are many other reasons as well.
> > I mean, as you pointed out, the MAK concoctions cost about
> > $900/year. If 200,000 people were taking MAK, the gross revenues
> > for MAPI for MAK alone would be nearly $200 MILLION/year. In
> > fact, the last time I talked to anyone at MAPI about this (about
> > 5 years ago, I believe), they were bragging that they had about
> > 5-10,000 people taking MAK regularly.
>
> Come off of it Lawson. The Maharishi doesn't have 200,000 followers.
In fact, if Andrew's claim is accurate, it *reinforces* Lawson's
point. But again he doesn't have any more hard data than Lawson
does.
> 5000 to 10,000 sounds about in the ball park for the number of devout
> TMers in the U.S.
>
> > Add in the $1000/quarter pancharkarma treatments, and you
> > would get another $800 million/year, yielding gross revenues of
> > about $1 billion/year.
>
> Far fewer TMers go for the panchakarma treatments because of the great
> cost and time required.
>
> But the question is not what is the total number of TMers in the U.S.
> who go for TM panchakarma treamtents. The question is how many TMers in
> the Canadian study went for the expensive panchakarma treaments.
Right.
> That question of course was not answered or even asked by the
> authors of the study.
No, because it wasn't relevant.
> Lawson doesn't want to address the fact that if even 2 or 3 of the
> nearly 700 TMers in the Canadian study went for panchakarma treaments as
> prescribed by TM, their cost would have completely erased the health
> care cost savings TM researchers were claiming for TM.
>
> For the Candian study to be valid, Lawson would have to prove that none
> of the nearly 700 TM practitioners use Maharishi Amrit Kalash or other
> MAV products or go for panchakarma treatments as TM prescribes. He would
> also have to prove that the nearly 700 TMers didn't pay to learn TM
> because the researchers did not include that cost in their study either.
Wrong. Andrew is deliberately misrepresenting the purpose of the
study.
> Imagine! A medical study of the health care cost savings of an
> intervention that did not include or even discuss the cost of the
> intervention!
The cost of the intervention *to the patient*. But it wasn't
costs to the patient that were being considered in this study, it
was what the Canadian government paid for their physician
utilization.
> > Finally, the assumption is that TMers do NOT use Western
> > medicine, which is just plain wrong.
>
> Again, Lawson SIMS shuffles the words. The hypothesis was
(That is, Andrew's counterhypothesis.)
> that TMers active in the movement
There's no evidence whatsoever that we've seen, other than your
unsupported claim, that the TMers in the study were "active in
the movement."
are encouraged to use Maharishi Ayur-Veda
> remedies and therefore many use conventional medical care less than they
> did before becoming involved with the TM movement.
Again, there is NO indication that these TMers were "involved
with the TM movement." Visiting a TM center or receiving a TM
newsletter does NOT equate to involvement in the movement.
The purpose of this study was very limited: to demonstrate that
one group of TM practitioners cost the Canadian government less
after learning TM than it did before.
> That is a hypothesis that can neither be ignored by the authors
> of the study
Sure it can, because that wasn't the point of the study. The
point of the study was to provide statistics that might induce
insurance companies and government health care providers to look
favorably on TM because people who practiced it tended to utilize
conventional health care less. At the least, insurance companies
might be convinced to offer lower rates to TMers; at best, as
noted, both insurance companies and government health care
providers might subsidize the costs of learning TM.
This would be a *major* boon to TM's promotion efforts. In the
U.S., if they could get lower insurance rates, it would be an
inducement to companies to pay for their employees to learn TM.
The question of whether TM practice itself makes people healthier
was not a necessary part of this strategy, although of course
people who didn't think it through could very well assume
practicing TM would make them healthier on this basis.
But there are plenty of other studies showing that the practice
of TM *does* have health benefits. This study didn't *have* to
show anything along these lines. It dealt with the financial
costs to a government provider.
> > >Second, the comparisons were invalid: they did not include the costs to
> > >learn TM and the costs of TM remedies. If you're going to compare the
> > >cost benefits between alternative approaches you must include the costs
> > >of both approaches. The TM paper only considered the costs of convential
> > >medical care. It was a pathetic attempt.
> >
> > But there is no evidence that rank-and-file TMers use MAV significantly
> > more than they use Western medicine
>
> More SIMS shuffling by Lawson. The question is not whether the TMers in
> the Candian study used MORE or less MAV remedies than conventional
> medical care. The question is how much MAV did they use and what were
> the costs of this care. This question was not answered of even discussed
> in the TM study.
Again, because it wasn't relevant. The issue wasn't the cost to
the patients of their health care but the cost to the Canadian
government.
> > , and definitive evidence that they do
> > NOT use MAV much, if at all. Otherwise, the MAV clinics and MAPI would be
> > making tons of money, and they are not.
>
> Lawson provides no data to back up his claims. Where are his data that
> the Canadian TMers did not use MAV products or get MAV treatments?
Where are Andrew's data on how many who learn TM continue to
practice it?
> In one of his more bizarre arguments, he seems to claim that the
> Canadian TMers weren't using MAV treatments or remedies because MAV
> clinics and MAPI are not making tons of money.
Actually it's a sound point. If the majority of practicing TMers
spent money on MAV, MAV clinics and MAPI, as Lawson says, would
be making a lot of money. Lawson *does* need to provide some
evidence that they aren't making a lot of money, but if he can it
rebuts Andrew's claim.
But Andrew's claim was a red herring in the first place, since
the study was not looking at what patients themselves paid for
their health care.
<snip>
> For example, "Letter from New Delhi" was submitted in Jan. 1991 and
> published in the May 22/29, 1991 issue of JAMA.
>
> Unfortunately, the editors didn't realize how bad that article was.
But I thought you've been insisting they published it because
they didn't realize Chopra et al. were associated with the TM
organization. You said virtually nothing about the quality of
the content of the article until some of the skeptics here read
it and said they thought it was garbage.
> Otherwise, they would have taken a lot longer to publish it. A Hell of
> lot longer. Matter of fact, the climate of Hell would have greatly
> improved by the time the article would would be published in JAMA, had
> the truth been known.
Oh, my, and now you're doubling back again. The "truth" in
question in this statement was not that it was a bad article but
that the authors didn't reveal their purported financial
connections.
Which was it, Andrew? Were the editors unaccountably blind to
the fatal flaws in the content of the article, or did they think
it was just fine as long as they believed the authors were
indepndent investigators?
Watch Andrew continue to jump back and forth between these two
contradictory claims, depending on what a TMer has said that he
wants to knock down at the moment.
Judy Stein
SantyClz <sant...@bellfnordsouth.net> wrote:
> Andrew Skolnick wrote:
<snip>
> > JAMA agreed that the manuscript would receive normal editorial review.
> > The TM plaintiffs agreed to sign an agreement dismissing the suit with
> > prejudice if the article was published.
> >
> > The article, which was twice rejected, was not published in JAMA.
>
> It sounds as if it were a completely one-sided
> agreement. "We'll do what we would have done
> anyway and you'll ...". Or had JAMA said something
> about not accepting any more submissions from
> Dr. Chopra, et. al.? Something seems to be
> missing here.
Very perceptive.
Don't hold your breath waiting for that missing something to be
filled in, however.
Lawson English
>TM and AAAM are not-for-profits; AAAM may be a legal division of
>TM or it may be nominally independent (Lawson, do you know?).
>MAPI is owned by AAAM, as I understand it, and its stock is held
>by a trust called Maharishi Ayurveda Foundation.
Last I heard, TM is a non-profit, educational organization, and Chopra
disbanded AAAM and MAAA when he quit the organization. MAF is a
not-for-profit organization, but I don't know if it still exists, either.
These days, everything appears to be licensed from a certain Maharishi
Vedic something-or-other company whose sole purpose appears to be to hold
the license to "Maharishi" trademarks and the like. DOn't know anything
beyond that.
Judy Stein
SantyClz <sant...@bellfnordsouth.net> wrote:
> Andrew Skolnick wrote:
> >
> <massive hack/>
> > MAV remedies were already introduced and were being marketed
> > intensely among TMers in that period. The study did not consider MAV use
> > at all. It only looked at Canadian government payments to physician for
> > patients who became TM meditators, practicing for 2 to 8 years. MAV
> > expenses, of course, are not reimbursed. And of course, there was the
> > cost of learning TM (more than $500 here in the US) and costs of
> > advanced training that many of the people in the study also took to
> > promote their health.
Which health-promoting advanced training was this, Andrew, and
how do you know "many of the people in the study" took it? How
many?
Are you referring to the TM-Sidhis, perhaps?
Some of those courses cost hundreds or even
> > thousands of US dollars each.
>
> Obviously of concern to a study of "health costs".
Not even with irony. This whole thing is one of Andrew's
exceedingly smelly red herrings. But don't feel bad; I missed it
the first time around myself.
> For non-surgical medicine, I believe the most expensive
> payment to the Dr. is the annual physical. The last
> time I had one it cost about $900.
Wow. That's some physical. Think that's what the Canadian
government pays every year for an individual?
(I didn't follow the rest of your arithmetic at all, so I'm not
commenting on it.)
<snip>
> As was pointed out later in this post, there is a
> significant likelihood that this particular group
> of TM'rs could be considered more likely than
> a random sample of TM'rs to be using MAV.
Not. Newsletters go out to everyone who learns TM; and whether a
visit to the TM center during the recruitment period signified
any greater than a random-sample likelihood that the person would
use MAV would depend on what specifically the person was doing at
the center.
But this doesn't matter, because it's a red herring anyway.
> So whether this study had any significance whatsoever
> would depend on what percentage of TM/MAV users
> were in the study and whether and by how much they
> decrease their reliance on "traditional" medicine.
*If* the purpose of the study had been to compare the costs of
health care pre- and post-TM, that would be absolutely correct.
But it wasn't. The purpose of the study, clearly stated in the
abstract, was to compare what the Canadian government paid for
physician visits pre- and post-TM.
> I doubt we will ever get an authoritative answer
> to that.
Of course not. That would be an entirely different study, much
more complicated, with a much smaller patient group.
> These do appear to be "fatal flaws" to me.
Nope, not of *this* study. They would have been fatal flaws had
the study been comparing health care costs pre- and post-TM.
But it wasn't.
If there was a fatal flaw, it was that the results weren't
generalizable because the study sample was self-selected and
there was no control group.
The study might still have been enough to make government health
care providers and insurance companies prick up their ears,
perhaps fund a study that *would* be generalizable.
Andrew Skolnick
>
> Andrew Skolnick <asko...@mindspring.com> said:
>
> >Had they gone back to the drawing board and redone
> >their study, it would have shown no savings once they factored in the
> >the first year after TM initiation, there was a mean decrease among 677
> >TMers of only about $10 (Canadian 1990 dollars = about $6 or $7 US
> >dollars). In the 6th year post-initiation (the one with the lowest mean
> >expenditure) physician payments for 36 TMers was about $65 (about
> >$40-$50 US) less.
>
> of "saving" money, only that fewer dollars had been spent on physicians.
>
> >
> >The cost of the basic TM instruction, if counted in the health care
> >study considered the cost of just ONE herbal product that TMers are all
> >encouraged to take daily (about $900 US per year), or any of the other
> >costs of health care almost certainly increased significantly. You can
> >see why the fatal flaw was not repairable. Hell, if only 5 or 6 of the
> >677 meditators bought Maharishi Amrit Kalash as they were told to, that
> >alone would have erased the entire mean "savings" for the first year!
> >
>
> have to examine the savings over a longer period.
Oh, no. I don't. The authors do. It's their study. Unfortunately, they
chose not to measure or even discuss the costs of the intervention they
claimed saved the government health care dollars.
> Besides, the benefits of
> MAK and TM may well go beyond what would be measured in this particular
> study. For instance, MAK has a wakeful effect, and TM itself reduces my
> required sleeping hours from 9 down to 6, giving ME a net savings of 1.5
> hours, not to mention it improves my emotional outlook, etc.
Lawson still hasn't realized that a study must rely on data. Unfounded
presumptions and Lawson's anecdotal study of himself cannot repair TM's
fatally flawed study.
> Such things couldn't be measured by this kind of study, but they can count
> as a *factor* in determining the cost/benefit analysis of TM/MAV use.
Wow. The TM authors most have written this in invisible ink. I guess I
should hold the manuscript over a flame and perhaps the invisible
writing might appear.
> >The entire mean savings for the 6th year post-initiation of about $65
> >(Candian 1990 dollars) for each of the 36 meditations would have been
> >exceded by just 3 of the meditators using this one MAV product! The
> >costs of TM initiation, advanced techniques, and other MAV products if
> >also considered would have driven the costs much much higher.
> >
>
> And the benefits, assuming there are any, derived from participating in
> those extra things might have been worth it for those participating in
> areas *besides* the one of physician's utilization.
What benefits, Lawson? The study of Canadian TMers does not measure any
benefits other than an alleged savings in physician fees. You're doing
it again, Lawson. Making up your own reality, treating baseless
assumptions as if they were facts.
> If my interpretation of
> Andrew's remarks is correct, the study asserted that after 5 years, the
> mean physician's use was done 25-35%. If that was a figure that reflects
> *health* rather than some evil TM plot to keep TMers from using western
> medicine, the actual long-term benefits to everyone save physicians should
> be obvious.
Not at all. What is obvious (but not to Lawson) is that the authors of
the TM study supposedly measured the savings obtained by introducing an
intervention program (TM meditation). But the authors not only failed to
include the cost of the intervention program, they don't even mention
it!
> >And despite the chaff ejected by the apologists, TMers are persuaded to
> >rely on MAV instead of conventional medicine.
>
> *SOME* are. Most are not. Do the math, Andrew. There's no way that MAPI
> could be distributing millions of bottles of MAK each year without it
> showing in some way.
I did the math, Lawson. But you keep ignoring it. Only one or two TMers
in the study of nearly 700 TMers who used Maharishi Amrit Kalash and
panchakarma would erase any of the supposed savings claimed in the TM
study.
> The study did not make any
> >effort to measure or account for this confounding factor. In the very
> >least, it was necessary for the study to show why all the TM propaganda
> >against conventional medicine DID not have an effect on this population
> >of TMers.
>
> Which propaganda was that?
>
> The study didn't even discuss the problem. It was a fatal
> >flaw. And like the other, it could not be corrected.
>
> Oooh.
>
> >
> >Another flaw I didn't mention is TMer bias. Subjects were TMers who
> >volunteered to take part in this study to show the effectiveness of TM
> >in reducing health care costs. People who learned TM at the centers in
> >this study, who were displeased with TM because of illness or other
> >problems, may not have taken part. This study population was almost
> >certainly a biased one. Of course, this flaw also was not discussed in
> >the study.
> >
>
> Huh. I think that the abstract covered all the bases in a generic sort of
> way by simply pointing out that it couldn't use a control group or control
> for any factors due to the nature of the survey.
Certainly not. The study did not discuss the serious problem of
selection bias. People recruited at TM centers who volunteered for the
TM study were very likely to be strong believers in the wonders of TM.
Those who learned TM but found no health or other benefits from it were
unlikely to have been recruited.
> Never said that it was a *good* study, Andrew, only that your claim that
> some substantial portion of TMers use other MAV strategies is wrong.
You should pay more attention to what I say rather than to what I don't
say. It wouldn't take a "substantial portion of TMers" in the Canadian
study who use MAV remedies to make the study invalid. Just one or two of
the nearly 700 TMers in the study using Maharishi Amrit Kalash and
panchakarma treatments as prescribed by TM would erase the supposed
health care savings reported in the TM study.
Lawson's apparent claim that none of the TMers among the nearly 700
TMers in the Canadian study used MAV remedies is beyond belief.
Andrew Skolnick
>
> Andrew Skolnick <asko...@spam.block.mindspring.com> said:
>
> >Correct. The study measured only government payments to physicians. It
> >
> >did not include costs for medication, hospitilization, etc. And it did
> >not include ANY of the costs of THE intervention that the study was
> >supposed to be testing! -- ie. the costs for TM initiation, advanced
> >techniques, and Maharishi Ayur-Veda remedies and treatments.
> >
> >intervention X and after internvention X. Only it doesn't bother to even
> >mention the costs of intervention X!
>
Oh, Lawson, you are so funny. Saying "Er, so?" as if this is not a
problem.
> Canadians might not care about the COST of going to a physician because
> most/all of that cost is covered by national health insurance (I think).
>
> However, the fact that they might go to a physican 50% less *often* after 7
> years of TM practice might be quite attractive to them, AND to the
> government.
>
> Don't forget that utilization of physicians also implies sick-leave,
> resulting in lower worker productivity and other related outcomes.
Er, Lawson, please tell me where in the study the authors reported these
findings on sick leave? They didn't even measure illness. They
reportedly measured only government reimbursement of physician charges.
Lawson's idea of scientific reasearch is to do a study and then make up
findings -- such as a decrease in sick leave -- to cover the study's
weaknesses and flaws when critics point them out!
Lawson has no justification for assuming the subjects in the TM study
had fewer sick days following TM initiation. One could hypothesize that
because some subjects were using MAV rather than medical care they
suffered more illnesses and sick days. But this too would be baseless
speculation. Lawson should stick to what is in the study. However, the
study is so seriously flawed, he grasps at every straw argument he can
think of to hide the flaws.
> If (IF)
> the lowered utilization of physicians was genuinely related to TM making
> the TMers stay well, then this would make it very attractive to business,
> government and individuals.
There he goes again, presuming that which is supposed to be proven.
There is no way to know from this study whether the reported reduction
in physician costs were the result of a reduction in illness or a
reduction of utilization of physician services due to a shift towards
MAV use. The study made no attempt to anwser this question. It did not
even mention the problem.
And of course, what Lawson stubbornly refuses to address, if the costs
of TM intervention programs had been included, there would not have been
any savings.
> But Andrew is leaving these implications out of his cost-benefits analysis
> and suggesting that the only useful criteria is whether TM cost less than
> it saved.
>
> Shows his backgroun as a JAMA assistant editor, I think.
Lawson thinks that he can cover up the fatal flaws in a medical study by
assuming "implications" never measured or even discussed by the authors.
The only thing the TM authors measured was physician cost.
I guess the authors had no need to measure or even discuss those other
alleged benefits. After all, they have Lawson who simply presumes
positive results for them.
-- Andrew Skolnick
http://nasw.org/users/ASkolnick
(To reply or send email, remove "spam.block." from address
asko...@spam.block.mindspring.com)
Andrew Skolnick
> >still practicing it has nothing to do with the Canadian study. The study
> >recruited TM practitioners attending TM center events and through TM
> >movement's newsletters.
>
> Ah, good point, and they WOULD tend to be ones taking MAK and other stuff.
> the "generic" TMer, and didn't notice the extremely skewed population that
> this had come from. Your points are far more important in this context and
> I withdraw my counter-points since a significant portion of them WOULD
> likely be taking MAK, etc.
Glad to have more of a meeting of the minds over this. Thanks for your
comment.
Andrew Skolnick
>
> >Oh, yeah? And where is your documented evidence for this? Of course, we
> >were not talking about the percentage of non-TMers who buy MAV products.
> >We were talking about the percentage of active TMers who use MAV
> >products.
> >
> >Lawson now wants us to believe that TMers don't buy MAV products. Yeah,
> >right.
> >
>
> attended the TM center regularly, so likely they WERE using MAV in some
> form.
>
Accepted. Thanks.
Andrew Skolnick
> >on the Trancenet Web site in which he cites his reasons. However, I've
> >learned to never trust anything Chopra says.
> >
>
> That exchange has a ring of truth since it shows Chopra was being a rather
> paranoid individual who STILL doesn't understand that his interview is
> revealing him as being paranoid.
Astute observation. I think you're correct.
Andrew Skolnick
>
> Andrew Skolnick wrote:
> >
> > SantyClz wrote:
> > >
> > > Andrew Skolnick wrote:
> > > >
> > > > SantyClz wrote:
> >
> > <snipped>
> >
> > > One would assume that any article submitted to JAMA
> > > would be considered for publication using JAMA's
> > > publication rules and procedures. Is this not the
> > > case?
> >
> > Yes.
> >
> > > Chopra et. al. about the handling of the submission
> > > from them or from the TM organization? (I mean
> > > something like "We agree to give priority to
> > > publishing an article from... as long as it meets
> > > our publication rules and if we do publish they
> > > will agree not to renew or continue the lawsuit.")
> >
> > The TM plaintiffs agreed to sign an agreement dismissing the suit with
> > prejudice if the article was published.
> >
> > The article, which was twice rejected, was not published in JAMA.
> >
>
> It sounds as if it were a completely one-sided
> agreement. "We'll do what we would have done
> anyway and you'll ...". Or had JAMA said something
> about not accepting any more submissions from
> Dr. Chopra, et. al.? Something seems to be
> missing here.
>
Nothing is missing.
Andrew Skolnick
<snipped>
> Last I heard, TM is a non-profit, educational organization, and Chopra
> disbanded AAAM and MAAA when he quit the organization. MAF is a
> not-for-profit organization, but I don't know if it still exists, either.
Lawson, are you sure that Chopra disbanded AAAM and MAAA? When was this?
What's your evidence?
-Andrew Skolnick
http://nasw.org/users
Lawson English
>Not at all. What is obvious (but not to Lawson) is that the authors of
>the TM study supposedly measured the savings obtained by introducing an
>intervention program (TM meditation). But the authors not only failed to
>include the cost of the intervention program, they don't even mention
>it!
Fewer dollars were spent. As far as I can tell from the abstract of the
published paper, that was all that was said. Perhaps the version that you
obtained made more extravegant claims, but "fewer dollars were spent on
physicians" is all that is claimed by the abstract.
A more interesting study might be devised to see just WHERE dollars were
spent -hospitals, MAV treatments and programs, movies, etc. But the study
(if you want to call it that -it was more like a survey of health-spending
of people who had agreed to participate) merely showed that they spent
fewer dollars using Canadian-government physicians after they learned to
meditate than they did before they learned to meditate.
The obvious thing to investigate is WHY were fewer dollars spent?
Where they spending more on MAV? Did they suddenly start hating Western
medicine? Did they simply not get sick as much? Did they cross the border
more often to get the commercial health care available in the US?
Given that TM is well-documented as an anti-stress technique (some might
say THE anti-stress technique), and that a substantial portion of all
illnesses and medical conditions are stress-related in some way, it isn't a
stretch to suggest that TM-practice lowered stress levels and that this was
translated into a reduced need to see a doctor.
But the study doesn't even attempt to suggest that, at least in the
abstract of the published version. It merely reports that the amount spent
by the Canadian government on the doctor's visits of this particular group
of TMers was reduced 5-7% per year after they learned TM, compared to a
baseline created from 3 year's worth of data immediately before they
learned TM.
As reported, it is, at best, suggestive of where future research might be
worthwhile.
As used by the TM propoganda machine, no doubt the most positive possible
interpretation of this data would/will-be/has-been used, but the study
itself doesn't appear to claim anything beyond what can be supported by the
data:
after-TM dollars-spent on physicians dropped an average of 5-7% per year
for several years (up to 7) compared to pre-TM dollars spent, at least
within the public health care system of Canada.
Leaving aside the issues of whether this study is worth publishing in JAMA,
do you agree or disagree that the findings support the need for further
research in this area?
In other words, based on what was reported, would YOU (a hypothetical
person in charge of assigning research-grant-money) be willing to fund
further research to clarify the various questions raised by this pilot
study?
Lawson English
> >And despite the chaff ejected by the apologists, TMers are persuaded to
>> >rely on MAV instead of conventional medicine.
>>
>> *SOME* are. Most are not. Do the math, Andrew. There's no way that MAPI
>> could be distributing millions of bottles of MAK each year without it
>> showing in some way.
>
>I did the math, Lawson. But you keep ignoring it. Only one or two TMers
>in the study of nearly 700 TMers who used Maharishi Amrit Kalash and
>panchakarma would erase any of the supposed savings claimed in the TM
>study.
But even if MAK and suchlike worked as claimed, one or two MAK-users in the
group wouldn't affect what WAS reported: the post-TM spending was less than
the pre-TM spending.
You're apparently assuming that participation in TM is not only going to
encourage people to spend money on MAK but will actually sour them on going
to a *free doctor*.
As far as I can tell, the purpose of the study, if you want to call it
that, was not to prove that TM saved lots of money (7% reduction in office
visists isn't a lot of money), but to show that it reduced the need to see
the doctor in the first place.
The reason why the cost-benefits analysis didn't include the cost of TM et
al. was because no cost-benefits analysis was done in the first place (at
least according to the abstract that I saw). The study didn't appear to be
about saving money, but about reductions in office visits, as measured by
amount spent. I don't know if there is a fixed fee for an office visit in
the Canadian health-system, but it seems plausible that there is and if so,
reduced cost of office visists would translate directly into reduced number
of office visits, implying improved health.
OR, implying that the TMers participating in the study became progressively
more hostile to the idea of partaking of the free medical system in Canada.
As presented, the data supports either interpretation.
Lawson English
>> Never said that it was a *good* study, Andrew, only that your claim that
>> some substantial portion of TMers use other MAV strategies is wrong.
>
>You should pay more attention to what I say rather than to what I don't
>say. It wouldn't take a "substantial portion of TMers" in the Canadian
>study who use MAV remedies to make the study invalid. Just one or two of
>the nearly 700 TMers in the study using Maharishi Amrit Kalash and
>panchakarma treatments as prescribed by TM would erase the supposed
>health care savings reported in the TM study.
>
>Lawson's apparent claim that none of the TMers among the nearly 700
>TMers in the Canadian study used MAV remedies is beyond belief.
We were/are obviously arguing apples and oranges. I'm going by the
published abstract, which merely reports reduced dollars spent on
Canadian-government physicians. You're assuming that this is meant to imply
massive savings, but 5-7% reductions are NOT massive savings, and the
abstract doesn't even hint that they are.
The most obvious interpretation of what the authors were looking at was
that is a financial measure of how often a patient felt the need to visit
a doctor -in other words, their health, or at least their subjective
impression of their own health. Prior to TM, they visited the doctor a
certain number of times a year. After TM, they visited the doctor less
often, and that figure got less as time went on.
The pro-TM interpretation is that they felt better and better, so they
didn't feel a need to go to the doctor.
The anti-TM interpretation is that they became progressively more
indoctrinated in MAV and hostile to the idea of going to the doctor.
Neither conclusion is supported by the data, and you would have to do more
research to see what really was going on. That's usually the purpose of
publishing positive pilot studies, you know: trying to establish a need for
more research.
Lawson English
I said:
>> >Great study, huh? A study that compares the health care costs before
>> >intervention X and after internvention X. Only it doesn't bother to
even
>> >mention the costs of intervention X!
>>
>> Er, so?
>
>Oh, Lawson, you are so funny. Saying "Er, so?" as if this is not a
>problem.
Given what was reported by the abstract, I don't see how you think it is a
problem:
Before TM, they spent x amount on the physicians visits (or the canadian
government did).
After TM, they spent about (x -0.05Y) on the physicians visits, where x is
the baseline figure and y is the year of the followup figure (yes, I know
that this isn't the real math, but you get the idea).
The point of the study doesn't appear to be cost-savings, but measuring
frequency of medical utilization in a free medical setting, which COULD be
an indicator of the subject's overall health (or an indicator of
progressive brain-washing on the part of the local TM center, I guess). A
government MIGHT be tempted to use such a program to reduce costs, but are
you suggesting that the Canadian government wouldn't do its own
cost-benefits analysis before releasing funds for people to learn TM?
The fact that no attempt was made to suggest that there was a net-savings
for the Canadian government suggests that this wasn't a cost-benefits
study, but a study to access how much was spent on physicians, which is
possibly correlated with overall health.
>
>> Canadians might not care about the COST of going to a physician because
>> most/all of that cost is covered by national health insurance (I think).
>>
>> However, the fact that they might go to a physican 50% less *often*
after
>7
>> years of TM practice might be quite attractive to them, AND to the
>> government.
>>
>> Don't forget that utilization of physicians also implies sick-leave,
>> resulting in lower worker productivity and other related outcomes.
>
>Er, Lawson, please tell me where in the study the authors reported these
>findings on sick leave? They didn't even measure illness. They
>reportedly measured only government reimbursement of physician charges.
>
Which is an indirect measure of how often a person feels the need to go to
the doctor which is often an indicator of their overall health.
>Lawson's idea of scientific reasearch is to do a study and then make up
>findings -- such as a decrease in sick leave -- to cover the study's
>weaknesses and flaws when critics point them out!
>
Er, your entire objection is based on the assumption that this was a
cost-benefits analysis when it really appears to be a preliminary
evaluation of how often people go to the doctor after they learned TM
compared to before they learned TM.
>Lawson has no justification for assuming the subjects in the TM study
>had fewer sick days following TM initiation. One could hypothesize that
>because some subjects were using MAV rather than medical care they
>suffered more illnesses and sick days. But this too would be baseless
>speculation. Lawson should stick to what is in the study. However, the
>study is so seriously flawed, he grasps at every straw argument he can
>think of to hide the flaws.
>
The study is, at best, a pilot survey of physician's use amongst TMers. It
is suggestive of where further research might be done. As a cost-benefits
analysis, of COURSE it is seriously flawed. This isn't surprising since it
doesn't appear to be a cost-benefits analysis since no such calculation was
reported. This appears to be an attempt to establish that TMers tend to
feel the need to go to the doctor less often, as measured by how much they
spend on physicians office visits.
The implication would be that if they are going to the doctor less often,
it is because they are not getting sick as often. Given the
stress-reduction nature of TM and the stress-related nature of most/all
illnesses (even cancer patients can feel worse when under a lot of outside
emotional stress, afterall), this isn't exactly ground-breaking research.
>> If (IF)
>> the lowered utilization of physicians was genuinely related to TM making
>> the TMers stay well, then this would make it very attractive to
business,
>> government and individuals.
>
>There he goes again, presuming that which is supposed to be proven.
>There is no way to know from this study whether the reported reduction
>in physician costs were the result of a reduction in illness or a
>reduction of utilization of physician services due to a shift towards
>MAV use. The study made no attempt to anwser this question. It did not
>even mention the problem.
>
Andrew, what does "if (IF)" mean?
>And of course, what Lawson stubbornly refuses to address, if the costs
>of TM intervention programs had been included, there would not have been
>any savings.
>
But no attempt was made to imply that there was a net-savings, at least in
the abstract that I saw:
"After beginning TM practice, subjects' adjusted expenses declined
significantly. The several methods used to assess the rate of decline
showed estimates ranging from 5% to 7% annually. CONCLUSIONS: The results
suggests that the TM technique reduces government payments to physicians.
However, because of the sampling method used, the generalizability of these
results to wider populations could not be evaluated."
>> But Andrew is leaving these implications out of his cost-benefits
>analysis
>> and suggesting that the only useful criteria is whether TM cost less
than
>> it saved.
>>
>> Shows his backgroun as a JAMA assistant editor, I think.
>
>Lawson thinks that he can cover up the fatal flaws in a medical study by
>assuming "implications" never measured or even discussed by the authors.
>The only thing the TM authors measured was physician cost.
>
>I guess the authors had no need to measure or even discuss those other
>alleged benefits. After all, they have Lawson who simply presumes
>positive results for them.
Andrew appears to believe that HE can decide what a study was meant to
show, and, based on his own assumptions, proceed to demonstrate the "fatal
flaws" of the study.
You're correct, Andrew: as a demonstration of the cost-benefits of using
TM, the study is fatally flawed. However, it is also fatally-flawed as a
study of how TM improves IQ or your sex-life.
Lawson English
>> Ah, good point, and they WOULD tend to be ones taking MAK and other
stuff.
>> Hadn't noticed that, thanks. I had assumed that this was more a study of
>> the "generic" TMer, and didn't notice the extremely skewed population
that
>> this had come from. Your points are far more important in this context
and
>> I withdraw my counter-points since a significant portion of them WOULD
>> likely be taking MAK, etc.
>
>Glad to have more of a meeting of the minds over this. Thanks for your
>comment.
It still doesn't change my interpretation of the study, as described in the
published abstract (your version may say things differently).
The study did NOT appear to be a cost-benefits analysis, but only a measure
of the amount spent on physicians, which should reflect the perceived need
to go to a doctor. That was not measured in the abstract, but there should
be a direct correlation between how often one goes to the doctor and how
often one feels the NEED to go the doctor -at least when health-care is
free.
OTOH, the presumption that this was a cost-benefits analysis isn't
supported at all, since no mention was made of cost-benefits in the first
place (at least in the published abstract -can't say anything about what
you have).
Lawson English
>> That exchange has a ring of truth since it shows Chopra was being a
>rather
>> paranoid individual who STILL doesn't understand that his interview is
>> revealing him as being paranoid.
>
>Astute observation. I think you're correct.
My recollection is that the official statement about Chopra's departure
said roughly that he had allowed himself to become extremely tired and that
the TM organization should deal gently and fondly with him. However, since
he no longer felt a need to support the TM organization in his actions, the
TM organization should stop supporting his actions.
This is what Trancenent has on its web-site. I recall that John Knapp
reported a slightly different version on a.m.t. several years ago, but
perhaps this was the version that he felt better reflected what was said to
him in the interview:
====
"Maharishi said to me, 'Everyone tells me you are competing with me.'"
Dr. Chopra said he was stricken.
He told the Maharishi, "I would never do that," and after a minute added,
"'Probably it would be best for me to leave the Movement.'"
"Maharishi was very sweet then, he said, 'Whatever decision would be best
for you.'"
"The whole thing lasted maybe two minutes. So I left the Movement.
======
Given that HE brought the whole thing up about leaving, I think that HE was
the one feeling guilty in the first place. But he apparently still doesn't
see that insight, even though it is revealed in his own words. I got he
same feeling from Hari Sharma when discussing his actions that lead to your
expose. I do NOT agree with what you did, but Hari still believes that he
is innocent about it all, which is obviously not valid, either (IMNSHO).
Lawson English
Just a rumor. A quick check of Altavista reveals:
aaam: nothing of relevance
maaa: nothing of relevance
Maharishi Ayurveda Association: ditto
American Association of Ayurvedic Medicine: ditto
Maharishi Ayurveda Foundation: ditto
All traces of Deepak Chopra's stint in the TM organization seem to be gone
save MAPI itself.
Andrew Skolnick
>
> Andrew Skolnick <asko...@mindspring.com> said:
>
> >Not at all. What is obvious (but not to Lawson) is that the authors of
> >the TM study supposedly measured the savings obtained by introducing an
> >intervention program (TM meditation). But the authors not only failed to
> >include the cost of the intervention program, they don't even mention
> >it!
>
> published paper, that was all that was said. Perhaps the version that you
> obtained made more extravegant claims, but "fewer dollars were spent on
> physicians" is all that is claimed by the abstract.
The study was fatally flawed because it didn't even question whether
more money was going to the TM organization for unproven remedies than
was being saved by diverting TMers from physician care. The study
clearly was aimed at convincing the Candian government to pay for TM
instructions and no doubt for Maharishi Ayur-Veda nostrums later on.
The study pretends to provide evidence that TM reduces health care
expenses and that this is an indication of improved health through the
practice of TM. This of course, is bogus from top town. The decline in
physican charges can easily be explained by the shift from conventional
medicine to TM "health care" which is not reimbursed -- not because of
any improvent in the health of the TMers.
What's more, even if only a handful of the nearly 700 TMers in the study
went for panchakarma and used Maharishi Amrit Kalash as prescribed by
TM, the physician services allegedly "saved" would pale compared with
the high costs of just these two TM health care remedies.
Of course the study did not measure the use of TM health services and
Maharishi Ayur-Veda remedies. It did not even discuss this as a possible
confounding factor (no surprise). The study also didn't mention the cost
of learning TM, which appears to be greater than the TOTAL savings the
authors reported in the 7 year follow up study.
Any crackpot group could stage such a sham study. Simply organize a
study of members of the group who are persuaded to go to the movement's
own healers rather than to conventional physicians who are reimbursed by
the Canadian government. Then the group can announce its finding that
their practices can reduce government spending on physicians and
therefore must be more effective than conventional medicine.
Yeah, right.
I must also address Judy Stein's lie that TMers are not discouraged from
seeking conventional medical care. To see what a bald faced lie her
statement is, just look at one of the TM movement's anti-medicine,
fear-mongering diatribes on the Web:
http://www.vedic-health.com/hazards/medicalhazards.html
Hazards of "Modern" Medicine
Avoided by the Maharishi Vedic Approach to Health
Massive Detrimental Effects
Public Health in Jeopardy
Injurious Technologies
An Economic Drain
Poisonous Drugs
Unreliable Medical Care
Hazardous Hospital Environment
Unnecessary Surgery Epidemic
Pushing Poisonous Drugs
Urgent Need for New Knowledge
Injury from medical treatment in the U.S. accounts for
more deaths than all other accidents combined.
Iatrogenic illness--disease produced as a result of medical
treatment--is now recognized as a health hazard of global proportions.
MEDLINE (the computerized medical research database of the United States
National Library of Medicine) includes over 7,000
articles, reports, and scientific research papers since 1966 that show a
substantial number of patients suffer treatment-caused disorders and
adverse drug reactions. These harmful effects, which can be serious and
even lethal, are associated with every facet of modern medicine
including drugs, other medical therapies, diagnostic procedures, and
surgery.
And from another TM web page, this bogus claim:
There is nothing in modern medicine that can produce
instantaneous
relief of pain like this" says Edwards Smith, M.D., FACP, one of
the
researchers witnessing the procedure.
"People have a choice," added Dr. Smith, "modern medicine treats
pain by blocking the normal transmission of pain from the
periphery
to the central nervous system; it is based on impeding the
normal
functioning of the physiology while the problem remains
unattended.
On the other hand, this program aims at eliminating the source
of pain
by restoring normal functioning of the physiology."
To prove that the TM subjects in their study had fewer physician visits
because of improved health, the TM researchers would have had to prove
that the meditators were NOT staying away from physicians because of
TM's fear-mongering, anti-medicine propaganda like the above.
Of course they didn't even discuss this confounding factor. Surprise,
surprise.
--Andrew Skolnick
http://nasw.org/users/ASkolnick
Lawson English
>What's more, even if only a handful of the nearly 700 TMers in the study
>went for panchakarma and used Maharishi Amrit Kalash as prescribed by
>TM, the physician services allegedly "saved" would pale compared with
>the high costs of just these two TM health care remedies.
But if only a handful of the nearly 700 TMers in the study were using MAV
instead of the free health-care provided by the Canadian government, it
wouldn't change the reported data significantly, if at all.
You accuse ME of reading things into the study that aren't there, and then
proceed to do so in a way that isn't even plausible.
There is NO evidence that substantial numbers of even the most committed
Canadian TMers are forsaking free Western health care for expensive MAV
products and services, and the study merely asserts that the payments made
to physicians were slightly reduced, not that money was saved.
My interpretation is that they are trying to imply that this means that
health improves from TM, not that TM or MAV/TM saves money, although both
of these assertions might be supported by better data, such as might be
found by doing longitudinal studies on hypertension.
Likewise, YOUR claims might be supported by better research, instead.
Lawson English
>Any crackpot group could stage such a sham study. Simply organize a
>study of members of the group who are persuaded to go to the movement's
>own healers rather than to conventional physicians who are reimbursed by
>the Canadian government. Then the group can announce its finding that
>their practices can reduce government spending on physicians and
>therefore must be more effective than conventional medicine.
Do you have an indication that this is how the subjects were chosen?
Andrew Skolnick
>
> Andrew Skolnick <asko...@spammenot.mindspring.com> said:
>
> >What's more, even if only a handful of the nearly 700 TMers in the study
> >went for panchakarma and used Maharishi Amrit Kalash as prescribed by
> >TM, the physician services allegedly "saved" would pale compared with
> >the high costs of just these two TM health care remedies.
>
> instead of the free health-care provided by the Canadian government, it
> wouldn't change the reported data significantly, if at all.
>
> You accuse ME of reading things into the study that aren't there, and then
> proceed to do so in a way that isn't even plausible.
>
> There is NO evidence that substantial numbers of even the most committed
> Canadian TMers are forsaking free Western health care for expensive MAV
> products and services, and the study merely asserts that the payments made
> to physicians were slightly reduced, not that money was saved.
>
> My interpretation is that they are trying to imply that this means that
> health improves from TM, not that TM or MAV/TM saves money, although both
> of these assertions might be supported by better data, such as might be
> found by doing longitudinal studies on hypertension.
>
> Likewise, YOUR claims might be supported by better research, instead.
You are soooo wrong, Lawson. It is not my obligation to prove that at
least a few of the nearly 700 TMers in the study were using TM MAV
health products or that a substantial number of them were scared away
from seeking medical care by TM's anti-medicine propaganda -- these are
perfectably reasonable possibilities that should have been addressed by
the study's authors. They weren't. They are reasonable alternatives to
explain the author's findings. And I find them more plausible than what
the TM author's would have us believe -- that the practice of TM
improves health and saves money.
-Andrew Skolnick
http://nasw.org/users/ASkolnick
Andrew Skolnick
>
> Andrew Skolnick said:
>
> >Any crackpot group could stage such a sham study. Simply organize a
> >study of members of the group who are persuaded to go to the movement's
> >own healers rather than to conventional physicians who are reimbursed by
> >the Canadian government. Then the group can announce its finding that
> >their practices can reduce government spending on physicians and
> >therefore must be more effective than conventional medicine.
>
through TM newsletters. The TMers in the study were self-selected
volunteers. Many if not most of these subjects were exposed to the TM
movement's anti-medicine campaigns and literature that make outrageous
claims like "every facet of modern medicine" is wroguht with serious,
even "lethal hazards" that can be "avoided" by chosing Maharishi
Ayur-Veda instead.
It's not my burden to prove that TM's fear-mongering campaign
discouraged some of the TMers in the study from visiting physicians. It
was the duty of the TM authors to prove that this anti-medicine
propaganda did NOT discourage subjects from seeking modern medical care,
which the TM movement says is "hazardous" and potentially "fatal."
If this propaganda had an effect, it could explain why TMers didn't
visit physicians as much after they started TM as they did before
learning TM. The authors didn't even discuss this possible explanation.
They appeared to want readers to believe that the only explanation for
the data is that TM improves health and reduces health care costs.
Yeah, right. Get a bunch of people together. Tell them that modern
medicine can kill them and what you have to sell them is better and
safer. Then go to the government with data that shows your members
aren't going to physicians as much as they did before. You can then
claim your medicine has made them healthier. Then you can ask the
government to reimburse your members for your high priced treatments
since you've proven they work.
That's "TM science."
--Andrew Skolnick
http://nasw.org/users/ASkolnick
Andrew Skolnick
> >> some substantial portion of TMers use other MAV strategies is wrong.
> >
> >You should pay more attention to what I say rather than to what I don't
> >say. It wouldn't take a "substantial portion of TMers" in the Canadian
> >study who use MAV remedies to make the study invalid. Just one or two of
> >the nearly 700 TMers in the study using Maharishi Amrit Kalash and
> >panchakarma treatments as prescribed by TM would erase the supposed
> >health care savings reported in the TM study.
> >
> >Lawson's apparent claim that none of the TMers among the nearly 700
> >TMers in the Canadian study used MAV remedies is beyond belief.
>
> published abstract, which merely reports reduced dollars spent on
> Canadian-government physicians. You're assuming that this is meant to imply
> massive savings, but 5-7% reductions are NOT massive savings, and the
> abstract doesn't even hint that they are.
>
> The most obvious interpretation of what the authors were looking at was
> that is a financial measure of how often a patient felt the need to visit
> a doctor -in other words, their health, or at least their subjective
> impression of their own health. Prior to TM, they visited the doctor a
> certain number of times a year. After TM, they visited the doctor less
> often, and that figure got less as time went on.
>
> The pro-TM interpretation is that they felt better and better, so they
> didn't feel a need to go to the doctor.
>
> The anti-TM interpretation is that they became progressively more
> indoctrinated in MAV and hostile to the idea of going to the doctor.
>
> Neither conclusion is supported by the data, and you would have to do more
> research to see what really was going on. That's usually the purpose of
> publishing positive pilot studies, you know: trying to establish a need for
> more research.
Wrong. Pilot study means a small study. It doesn't mean a flawed study
whose design cannot measure that which it pretends to measure.
The TM study looks as if it's measuring an improvement in the health of
TMers compared with the period of time before they took up TM.
But it does no such thing. All the study did was measure a decline in
visits to physicians by people involved with a movement that instructs
them modern medicine is "hazardous" and may kill them, while offering
them unproven, high-priced remedies that it touts as safer and more
effective than modern medicine.
Such a study is fatally flawed and meaningless. It certainly does not
justify launching an even larger flawed study. If TMers were serious
about scientifically proving their claims, they would conduct a
randomized control trial. But of course, they won't. They rather just
criticize the need for randomized control trials and offer instead
flawed studies that just paint bullseyes around the arrows they shoot.
-Andrew Skolnick
http://nasw.org/users/ASkolnick
Andrew Skolnick
>
> Andrew Skolnick <asko...@mindspring.com> said:
>
> >Lawson English wrote:
> ><snipped>
> >
> >> Last I heard, TM is a non-profit, educational organization, and Chopra
> >> disbanded AAAM and MAAA when he quit the organization. MAF is a
> >> not-for-profit organization, but I don't know if it still exists,
> either.
> >
> >Lawson, are you sure that Chopra disbanded AAAM and MAAA? When was
> >this?
> >What's your evidence?
>
> Just a rumor. A quick check of Altavista reveals:
>
> aaam: nothing of relevance
> maaa: nothing of relevance
> Maharishi Ayurveda Association: ditto
> American Association of Ayurvedic Medicine: ditto
> Maharishi Ayurveda Foundation: ditto
>
> All traces of Deepak Chopra's stint in the TM organization seem to be gone
> save MAPI itself.
Does the rumor say when MAAA and AAAM were dissolved? Does it say they
were dissolved by Chopra or by others after Chopra split?
-Andrew Skolnick
http://nasw.org/users/ASkolnick
Lawson English
>They are reasonable alternatives to
>explain the author's findings. And I find them more plausible than what
>the TM author's would have us believe -- that the practice of TM
>improves health and saves money.
Er, are you saying that TM, leaving aside the question whether or not it
works better than some other stress-reduction technique, doesn't actually
reduce stress at all, or are you saying that reductions in stress wouldn't
result in the kind of reductions in medical cost suggested by the study
(5-7%/year)?
alrightythen...
Lawson English
>If this propaganda had an effect, it could explain why TMers didn't
>visit physicians as much after they started TM as they did before
>learning TM. The authors didn't even discuss this possible explanation.
>They appeared to want readers to believe that the only explanation for
>the data is that TM improves health and reduces health care costs.
Do you have any evidence at all that the TM propoganda has an effect on
most people?
I mean, from what YOU are suggesting, some exceedingly high percentage of
TMers in the study must be doing MAV stuff.
In the entire USA, only 5-10,000 people are talking the premier MAK
concoction, MAK, so you appear to be suggesting that this study managed to
find the equivalent of about 5-10% of the MAK users in the US?
Wow. Talk about *effective* advertising.
Lawson English
>Such a study is fatally flawed and meaningless. It certainly does not
>justify launching an even larger flawed study. If TMers were serious
>about scientifically proving their claims, they would conduct a
>randomized control trial. But of course, they won't. They rather just
>criticize the need for randomized control trials and offer instead
>flawed studies that just paint bullseyes around the arrows they shoot.
Er, you mean like the study published in _Hypertension_ a year or two ago
that we discussed recently?
LIke the other randomized controlled studies published in the last 10 years
that we have discussed?
Sheesh, Andrew, you are really getting out of control.
Are you aware of this?
Lawson English
>Does the rumor say when MAAA and AAAM were dissolved? Does it say they
>were dissolved by Chopra or by others after Chopra split?
Sometime during that period, but I don't know who did what.
Lawson English
>> If there was a fatal flaw, it was that the results weren't
>> generalizable because the study sample was self-selected and
>> there was no control group.
>
>The "fatal flaw" I was pointing out was not Andrew's
>claims about total costs, but that this study
>essentially showed *nothing whatsoever*!
Yep. It *might* be used to justify funding a better study, but that's about
it.
SantyClz
>
> In article <3793A628...@bellfnordsouth.net>,
> SantyClz <sant...@bellfnordsouth.net> wrote:
>
> > Andrew Skolnick wrote:
> > >
> > <massive hack/>
> > > MAV remedies were already introduced and were being marketed
> > > intensely among TMers in that period. The study did not consider MAV use
> > > at all. It only looked at Canadian government payments to physician for
> > > patients who became TM meditators, practicing for 2 to 8 years. MAV
> > > expenses, of course, are not reimbursed. And of course, there was the
> > > cost of learning TM (more than $500 here in the US) and costs of
> > > advanced training that many of the people in the study also took to
> > > promote their health.
>
> Which health-promoting advanced training was this, Andrew, and
> how do you know "many of the people in the study" took it? How
> many?
>
> Are you referring to the TM-Sidhis, perhaps?
>
> Some of those courses cost hundreds or even
> > > thousands of US dollars each.
> >
> > Obviously of concern to a study of "health costs".
>
> Not even with irony. This whole thing is one of Andrew's
> exceedingly smelly red herrings. But don't feel bad; I missed it
> the first time around myself.
I don't feel bad, I didn't miss it. The first statement you
snipped (without acknowledging snippage) was:
Equally obviously not of concern to a study of
"physician payments".[1]
/endselfquote
Which, with the subsequent analysis (which you
also snipped) made it clear I was only discussing
the actual objectives of the study.
And, by the way, it was Lawson, not Andrew, who posted
(on Sunday at 3:21AM [you really *do* need to get a
life, Lawson]):
It wasn't that ground-breaking a study in the first place, and the
conclusion wasn't that it had saved anyone money (at least the
abstract
didn't say that) but that the documented average health care cost in
the
TM'rs declined about 5-7% per year for the period of the study.
/endquote
Not "physician payment", "health care cost". Now I
believe that Lawson was not trying to invent a "red
herring" no matter how smelly, but just misremembering
or being a little careless (as can be expected at 3:21
in the AM).
>
Once again, you didn't acknowledge your snip here.
> > For non-surgical medicine, I believe the most expensive
> > payment to the Dr. is the annual physical. The last
> > time I had one it cost about $900.
>
> Wow. That's some physical. Think that's what the Canadian
> government pays every year for an individual?
No idea. That's what I had to pay. That's all I claimed.
Since I don't have any health insurance, I tend to know
exactly how much my health care costs.
>
> (I didn't follow the rest of your arithmetic at all, so I'm not
> commenting on it.)
What you didn't follow, was, if correct, an analysis
of how little was needed to affect a 7% per annum
reduction in physician payments -- what the research
paper was all about.
>
> <snip>
> > As was pointed out later in this post, there is a
> > significant likelihood that this particular group
> > of TM'rs could be considered more likely than
> > a random sample of TM'rs to be using MAV.
>
> Not. Newsletters go out to everyone who learns TM; and whether a
> visit to the TM center during the recruitment period signified
> any greater than a random-sample likelihood that the person would
> use MAV would depend on what specifically the person was doing at
> the center.
Where do TM newsletters enter into this? Is this another
of those "red herrings" you warned me about?
Do you have information we don't about the "recruitment
period", its length, for example, could significantly
affect the ratio of people who signed up who were
daily or weekly attendees at the center as opposed to
those who went only once every year or two. Are you
implying that a person who only attends once every
year or two is as likely to be a "true believer" as is
one who attends daily?
Is it possible that there were even a few people in
the group who were "true believers"?
Could there have been as many as 25-30?
>
> But this doesn't matter, because it's a red herring anyway.
>
> > So whether this study had any significance whatsoever
> > would depend on what percentage of TM/MAV users
> > were in the study and whether and by how much they
> > decrease their reliance on "traditional" medicine.
>
> *If* the purpose of the study had been to compare the costs of
> health care pre- and post-TM, that would be absolutely correct.
>
> But it wasn't. The purpose of the study, clearly stated in the
> abstract, was to compare what the Canadian government paid for
> physician visits pre- and post-TM.
And that was exactly what was addressed in the
portion you "didn't follow" and snipped.
>
> > I doubt we will ever get an authoritative answer
> > to that.
>
> Of course not. That would be an entirely different study, much
> more complicated, with a much smaller patient group.
>
> > These do appear to be "fatal flaws" to me.
>
> Nope, not of *this* study. They would have been fatal flaws had
> the study been comparing health care costs pre- and post-TM.
>
> But it wasn't.
But what you cut was the heart that showed how
TM/MAV was applicable to *this* study, not to a
hypothetical study of "total health costs".
Your snipping made it look as if I was talking
about different things than those I was addressing.
I can make myself look like a fool easily enough,
I don't need to have someone editing my material
to make me look more like one.
>
> If there was a fatal flaw, it was that the results weren't
> generalizable because the study sample was self-selected and
> there was no control group.
The "fatal flaw" I was pointing out was not Andrew's
claims about total costs, but that this study
essentially showed *nothing whatsoever*!
>
> The study might still have been enough to make government health
> care providers and insurance companies prick up their ears,
> perhaps fund a study that *would* be generalizable.
It shouldn't. All this study showed is that "physician
payments" is a subject only of interest to physicians.
It's too narrow a target to be meaningful to anyone else.
>
> ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
> + Judy Stein * The Author's Friend * jst...@panix.com +
> ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
And then, to add insult to injury, you even
snipped my joke about trying to sell "physician
payment" reductions to the AMA!
Joe "How could you!" Shair
--
G! d? s+:+ a++ C+++ U--- P L E-- W+ N* w PS+++
PE Y+ PGP- t+ 5 X+ R* tv-- b+++ G e h+ y+++(**)
Remove invisible words to reply.
Andrew Skolnick
>
> SantyClz <sant...@bellfnordsouth.net> said:
>
> >> If there was a fatal flaw, it was that the results weren't
> >> generalizable because the study sample was self-selected and
> >> there was no control group.
> >
> >The "fatal flaw" I was pointing out was not Andrew's
> >claims about total costs, but that this study
> >essentially showed *nothing whatsoever*!
>
> it.
But Lawson, this was the study that the TM plaintiffs threatened to sue
the JAMA editor for $194 million if the prestigious science journal
didn't publish this study which you agree showed nothing whatsoever. Do
you remember what this thread is about? TM bullying of news media.
Frankly, this study shows a lot about how the TM movement works.
--Andrew Skolnick
http://nasw.org/users/ASkolnick
Andrew Skolnick
>
> Andrew Skolnick <asko...@mindspring.com> said:
>
> >They are reasonable alternatives to
> >explain the author's findings. And I find them more plausible than what
> >the TM author's would have us believe -- that the practice of TM
> >improves health and saves money.
>
> Er, are you saying that TM, leaving aside the question whether or not it
> works better than some other stress-reduction technique, doesn't actually
> reduce stress at all, or are you saying that reductions in stress wouldn't
> result in the kind of reductions in medical cost suggested by the study
> (5-7%/year)?
>
> alrightythen...
The latter. (I don't think anyone argues that two 20-minute periods of
TM a day doesn't reduce stress.)
--Andrew Skolnick
http://nasw.org/users/ASkolnick
Andrew Skolnick
>
> Andrew Skolnick <asko...@spamblock.mindspring.com> said:
>
> >If this propaganda had an effect, it could explain why TMers didn't
> >visit physicians as much after they started TM as they did before
> >learning TM. The authors didn't even discuss this possible explanation.
> >They appeared to want readers to believe that the only explanation for
> >the data is that TM improves health and reduces health care costs.
>
> Do you have any evidence at all that the TM propoganda has an effect on
> most people?
Not on most people Lawson, on TM practitioners who volunteered for a TM
study. For crying out loud!
I don't have to provide evidence that TM's anti-medicine "education" has
an effect on TMers. The authors needed to show that it didn't. Of course
they didn't bother to even mention the problem of anti-medicine bias at
all.
It's pretty clear that TMers who would volunteer for a TM study have
shown a remarkably strong inclination to believe TM claims. Hell, each
one of them forked over at least $500 as a down payment on the
Maharishi's promised bliss. No doubt many or even most of the TMers in
the study have given a lot more of their income and time to TM. Without
proving that the TM subjects reduced their visits to physicians because
of TM teachings, the study isn't worth the paper it was printed on.
> I mean, from what YOU are suggesting, some exceedingly high percentage of
> TMers in the study must be doing MAV stuff.
How many times to I have to tell you that it would only take 2 or 3 of
the nearly 700 TMers in the study to be using MAK and panchakarma to
surpass the reported savings in physician payments. To Lawson, .4%
(four-tenths of one percent) is "some exceedingly high percentage."
The mean savings ranged from about $7 to about $50 per person per year
over the 7-year follow-up period. TM's anti-medicine propaganda, warning
TMers that modern medicine, unlike Maharishi Ayur-Veda, is hazardous and
deadly could easily discourage TMers from going to a physician for minor
or even moderate problems. It wouldn't take much of that to produce the
supposed savings reported in this study.
How much Maharishi Ayur-Veda products and services are being sold in
Quebec? The study of course doesn't even raise this question. Whatever
the amount is, many of the subjects in this study are probably the
people using those products and services. Who is willing to bet me that
those sales didn't go up as the visits to physicians went down?
Conducting a study that supposedly measures improvement in TMers' health
by measuring useage of physician services, in my opinion, is just
another cynical attempt to deceive people. It gives the appearance that
teaching people TM saves money and improves health.
> In the entire USA, only 5-10,000 people are talking the premier MAK
> concoction, MAK, so you appear to be suggesting that this study managed to
> find the equivalent of about 5-10% of the MAK users in the US?
>
> Wow. Talk about *effective* advertising.
Huh? What are you talking about? The study involved TMers in Quebec
Canada.
Lawson English
>But Lawson, this was the study that the TM plaintiffs threatened to sue
>the JAMA editor for $194 million if the prestigious science journal
>didn't publish this study which you agree showed nothing whatsoever. Do
>you remember what this thread is about? TM bullying of news media.
>
>Frankly, this study shows a lot about how the TM movement works.
Er, this was the study that the TM plaintiffs said they would be willing to
fail to renew the lawsuit, if it were published by JAMA. It never were.
WHY they wanted this particular study published in JAMA is beyond me.
Perhaps it was the only one that they had handy?
Or maybe they just wanted a positive study published in JAMA.
Lawson English
So, an across-the-board reduction in stress (assuming that is what is going
on) wouldn't translate into a 5-7%/year reduction in the average need to
see a doctor?
It doesn't sound at all implausible. The only *real* question to me is:
would some other meditation/relaxation technique show similar/better
results?
Lawson English
>It's pretty clear that TMers who would volunteer for a TM study have
>shown a remarkably strong inclination to believe TM claims.
The commitment was merely allowing the researchers to access their health
files, obviously. Sounds like a remarkably strong inclindation to believe
TM claims to me. [not]
Hell, each
>one of them forked over at least $500 as a down payment on the
>Maharishi's promised bliss.
What is the difference between those that decide to participate and those
that don't? Both forked over $500, no? The "strong" commitment that led
them to allow researchers access to their medical-use records?
No doubt many or even most of the TMers in
>the study have given a lot more of their income and time to TM.
Really? Given the rather high drop-out rate that other studies have
indicated? These Canadian newbies must be quite exceptional in their
dedication, eh?
Without
>proving that the TM subjects reduced their visits to physicians because
>of TM teachings, the study isn't worth the paper it was printed on.
>
Er, that would be TM *practice*, anyway, and it was obviously a quick and
dirty survey of health costs, and very cheap to do. More expensive studies
couldn't be justified until the cheapo survey was done, no?
>> I mean, from what YOU are suggesting, some exceedingly high percentage
>of
>> TMers in the study must be doing MAV stuff.
>
>How many times to I have to tell you that it would only take 2 or 3 of
>the nearly 700 TMers in the study to be using MAK and panchakarma to
>surpass the reported savings in physician payments. To Lawson, .4%
>(four-tenths of one percent) is "some exceedingly high percentage."
>
How many times must we point out that this wasn't a cost-benefit study and
that for your assertion to make sense, we would have to show that it is
plausible that these gung-ho TM-newbies were not only spending money on MAV
stuff but that it was due to TM participation that they were avoiding using
free medical care?
>The mean savings ranged from about $7 to about $50 per person per year
>over the 7-year follow-up period. TM's anti-medicine propaganda, warning
>TMers that modern medicine, unlike Maharishi Ayur-Veda, is hazardous and
>deadly could easily discourage TMers from going to a physician for minor
>or even moderate problems. It wouldn't take much of that to produce the
>supposed savings reported in this study.
I see. ANd you have no proof that these people were paying any attention to
this stuff in the first place. 25-50% of all the newbies that agreed to
participate were SO vulnerable to this propaganda that they simply stopped
using Western medicine over a period of 5-7 years.
Uh-huh.
You're really stretching here. The obvious question isn't whether or not
TMers suddenly develop an accumulative hatred of modern medicine, but
whether or not other the practice of relaxation/meditation techniques
results in the same small, but accumulative, reductions in medical use.
>
>How much Maharishi Ayur-Veda products and services are being sold in
>Quebec? The study of course doesn't even raise this question. Whatever
>the amount is, many of the subjects in this study are probably the
>people using those products and services.
SOME of the subjects are. Only a tiny fraction of all TMers use MAV
products. While this fraction is obviously MUCH higher than the
non-TM-useage, it is STILL a small percentage.
Who is willing to bet me that
>those sales didn't go up as the visits to physicians went down?
>
By what percent? And does it matter? Your interpretation is that people
were purchasing MAV stuff because they hate MDs or some-such. A more
plausible explanation is that the MAV use is irrelavant to the study's
findings and that the anti-stress effects of TM account for the vast
majority of the perceived effect. The question is STILL: what effect would
other meditation/relaxation techniques have in the same circumstances?
Trying to discredit the findings because a few people might be using
expensive alternative medicine instead free mainstream medicine is silly.
By the end of the experiment, there was between 25 and 50% reductions in
physicians' payments, implying that there were 25-50% fewer visits. For
your scenario to make sense, 25-50% of the TMers in the study would have
had to become completely hostile towards Western medicine. That is an
AMAZING propoganda machine that you are assuming exists. Remember that ALL
of these people were newbies when the baseline was established, so you are
saying that 35-50% of ALL new TMers become hostile to Western medicine to
the point that they simply don't use free medical assistance.
>Conducting a study that supposedly measures improvement in TMers' health
>by measuring useage of physician services, in my opinion, is just
>another cynical attempt to deceive people. It gives the appearance that
>teaching people TM saves money and improves health.
>
And TM probably does. Your objections are silly.
>> In the entire USA, only 5-10,000 people are talking the premier MAK
>> concoction, MAK, so you appear to be suggesting that this study managed
>to
>> find the equivalent of about 5-10% of the MAK users in the US?
>>
>> Wow. Talk about *effective* advertising.
>
>Huh? What are you talking about? The study involved TMers in Quebec
>Canada.
Yes, so in one province in Canada, in one multi-year study, apparently the
MAV folks managed to get 25-50% of participants of an impersonal survey to
participate in MAV products costing thousands of dollars a year rather than
make use of free medical care. Remember that these were NEW meditators, by
defintion, since the study tracked their health-care costs for 3 years
prior to the instruction in TM, and then followed them for up to 7 years
afterwards. Look at the statistic that you are asserting: 25-49% of ALL the
newbies studied developed an active hatred of Western medicine that made
them avoid free visits to a medical doctor.
So what makes the Canandians so easily swayed? Why have the number of MAV
clinics in the US been steadily dropping if it is that easy to convince,
over a period of 5-7 years, 25-49% of a group of Canadian newbie TMers to
spend thousands of dollars on untested products RATHER THAN partake of free
medical care?
K. D.
Lawson English wrote in message ...
>Andrew Skolnick said:
>>Any crackpot group could stage such a sham study. Simply organize a
>>study of members of the group who are persuaded to go to the movement's
>>own healers rather than to conventional physicians who are reimbursed by
>>the Canadian government. Then the group can announce its finding that
>>their practices can reduce government spending on physicians and
>>therefore must be more effective than conventional medicine.
>Do you have an indication that this is how the subjects were chosen?
It isn't the point that Andrew Skolnick has no evidence that is how the
subjects were chosen. The point remains that in a study such as this, there
is a high motivation to choose biased subjects, and that arguably there is a
high likelihood that they COULD have been chosen this way. I ask: Was it
sufficiently proven that the subjects were NOT chosen in this way?
It is incumbent on the organizers of the study to show that the subjects
were NOT biased. Part of any decent scientific study is going to be a
demonstration, by the organizers, of the non-bias of the methods and the
subjects used in the study.
Judy Stein
Andrew Skolnick <asko...@spamblock.mindspring.com> wrote:
> Lawson English wrote:
<snip>
> > >Lawson now wants us to believe that TMers don't buy MAV products. Yeah,
> > >right.
> >
> > Most do not. However, the sample was drawn (missed this) from people who
> > attended the TM center regularly, so likely they WERE using MAV in some
> > form.
> >
> > SOrry.
>
> Accepted. Thanks.
Where is it stated that the sample was drawn from people who
"attended the TM center regularly," Andrew? Those were not your
words.
If you do not know this was the case, on what basis are you
accepting Lawson's statement?
Judy Stein
Andrew Skolnick <asko...@spamblock.mindspring.com> wrote:
> SantyClz wrote:
<snip>
> > It sounds as if it were a completely one-sided
> > agreement. "We'll do what we would have done
> > anyway and you'll ...". Or had JAMA said something
> > about not accepting any more submissions from
> > Dr. Chopra, et. al.? Something seems to be
> > missing here.
>
> Nothing is missing.
As I said, don't hold your breath waiting for what's missing to
be filled in by Andrew.
Judy Stein
Andrew Skolnick <asko...@spamblock.mindspring.com> wrote:
<snip>
> And of course, what Lawson stubbornly refuses to address, if the costs
> of TM intervention programs had been included, there would not have been
> any savings.
But, of course, as Andrew stubbornly refuses to acknowledge, that
was not the purpose of the study, to determine "any savings."
The purpose of the study, as stated in the published abstract
(and as Andrew well knows), was to determine *savings to the
Canadian government*, period.
Since the Canadian government did not pay for the intervention,
there was no reason to include its costs.
The study was not "fatally flawed," at least with regard to
anything so far discussed here. It was "fatally limited" with
regard to what JAMA's readership would have been interested in.
It was also limited in that its results were not generalizable to
all TMers, since the sample was self-selected.
But the study's findings, limited as they were (assuming they
were properly determined), might well have been of interest to
the Canadian government and quite possibly also to insurance
companies.
Judy Stein
Andrew Skolnick <asko...@spammenot.mindspring.com> wrote:
<snip>
> I must also address Judy Stein's lie that TMers are not discouraged from
> seeking conventional medical care. To see what a bald faced lie her
> statement is, just look at one of the TM movement's anti-medicine,
> fear-mongering diatribes on the Web:
I have never seen anything like this before from the movement.
If I had, I would have qualified my statement, because that Web
page could certainly be construed as discouraging folks from
using conventional medical care. Unlike Andrew, I always tell
the truth exactly as I know it.
But what's on this Web page is unique in my experience. (And I'd
be interested to know whether Andrew has actually seen any
others--note that he says "look at ONE OF THE TM
movement's...diatribes." He has a habit of deceptively using
terms like "including" and "one of the" when he's citing a single
isolated instance.)
Everything *I've* ever heard from the movement on the subject of
conventional medical care is that you should go to the doctor
when you're sick and follow your doctor's advice (it's even in
the checking notes). I've never seen any Maharishi Ayur-Veda
modality promoted as a *substitute* for conventional medical care
but rather as an adjunct to it. Perhaps this page represents a
recent change in policy; I hope not, and I rather doubt it
actually does.
This Web site is devoted to the new "Maharishi Vedic Vibration
Technology," the "Instant Relief" program for people with chronic
conditions, not Maharishi Ayur-Veda in general. A recent issue
of "Enlightenment" magazine contains a large section on the same
program, but it does not include anything like this Web essay.
Indeed, it prominently features this disclaimer in bold type in a
highlighted box:
Maharishi Vedic Vibration Technology is not intended as a
replacement for any medical care that might be necessary now or
in the future. It is advised that every applicant continue to
follow the recommendations of his or her family doctor or any
specialist with whom he or she has consulted. In case of
improvement of the condition, it is advised to consult a
physician before reducing, changing or discontinuing any
treatment being received.
I didn't see this disclaimer on the Web site, and if it isn't
there somewhere, it's a very unfortunate omission.
With regard to Maharishi Ayur-Veda in general, it is certainly
held that if you take care of your health with Maharishi
Ayur-Veda, including TM, you'll be less likely to get sick and
*require* conventional medical treatment. But that's quite
different from discouraging folks from seeking conventional
medical treatment if they *do* need it.
I would urge readers to have a look at the entire Web page. It's
a detailed, thoroughly documented discussion of some of the
serious problems in the current practice of medicine. Most of
them are not problems arising from the limitations of current
scientific knowledge but systemic problems, such as overuse of
antibiotics that breeds resistant bacteria; the huge financial
pressures behind the aggressive marketing of new drugs, which may
result in downplaying negative side effects and exaggerating
effectiveness; unnecessary surgery; and harm caused to patients
by equipment malfunction in connection with reliance on high
technology.
The documentation includes studies and editorials published in
JAMA, the New England Journal of Medicine, Annals of Internal
Medicine, Archives of Internal Medicine, British Medical Journal,
and Journal of Clinical Epidemiology, among others, and cites
findings and statements of Dr. Lucien Leape (Harvard School of
Public Health), Dr. David Kessler (former head of the Food and
Drug Administration), Dr. Philip Lee (assistant secretary of
health), and a congressional subcommittee, so it's not as if the
frightening statistics are not backed up by impeccable sources.
It's no different from the stories about the hazards of modern
medical care you see all the time in the popular media, including
such reputable publications as The New York Times. (It's also
not at all inconsistent with my personal experience with
conventional health care on the occasions that I've needed it,
which have fortunately been few, and the experiences of friends
and family.)
What's missing in the essay is an attempt to put the scary stuff
in perspective. The medical system per se definitely needs
reforms in many areas. But modern medicine also has enormous
benefits that significantly outweigh the systemic problems.
Nevertheless, it *does* make sense, obviously, to do whatever you
can to avoid getting sick and exposing yourself to some of these
systemic drawbacks, not to mention the expense, not to mention
the discomfort and potential disability, if not death, resulting
from illness even with the best of treatment.
And because the idea of discouraging people from seeking
conventional medical care is so atypical of everything else I've
seen or heard from the movement, I'm inclined to think the
purpose of the piece was subtly different, although not made
sufficiently clear: it's to urge people to avail themselves of
preventive measures, as I suggested above; to consider Maharishi
Ayur-Veda, in particular this new "Vibration Technology," when
conventional medical care doesn't work (this is, in fact, stated
elsewhere on the site, although not on this page); and to argue
that modern medicine should adopt the approaches of Maharishi
Ayur-Veda so that many of the current hazards could be avoided
(which *is* stated at the end of the essay).
On what basis do you say this claim is "bogus," Andrew?
> There is nothing in modern medicine that can produce
> instantaneous relief of pain like this" says Edwards Smith, M.D.,
> FACP, one of the researchers witnessing the procedure.
> "People have a choice," added Dr. Smith, "modern
> medicine treats pain by blocking the normal transmission of pain
> from the periphery to the central nervous system; it is based on
> impeding the normal functioning of the physiology while the
> problem remains unattended. On the other hand, this program aims
> at eliminating the source of pain by restoring normal functioning
> of the physiology."
> To prove that the TM subjects in their study had fewer physician visits
> because of improved health,
That wasn't what the study claimed to have proved, so it's
irrelevant.
the TM researchers would have had to prove
> that the meditators were NOT staying away from physicians because of
> TM's fear-mongering, anti-medicine propaganda like the above.
As noted, this is the *first* time I've ever seen anything like
that from the movement, and I've seen a *lot* of movement
literature in 24 years. It's inconsistent with everything I
*have* seen, and I strenuously disapprove of its lack of
balance--although the hazards it warns of, as I pointed out, are
documented by impeccable sources.
> Of course they didn't even discuss this confounding factor. Surprise,
> surprise.
Not a confounding factor, however, in terms of the published
study.
Judy Stein
"Lawson English" <eng...@primenet.com> wrote:
<snip>
> ====
> "Maharishi said to me, 'Everyone tells me you are competing with me.'"
> Dr. Chopra said he was stricken.
> He told the Maharishi, "I would never do that," and after a minute added,
> "'Probably it would be best for me to leave the Movement.'"
> "Maharishi was very sweet then, he said, 'Whatever decision would be best
> for you.'"
> "The whole thing lasted maybe two minutes. So I left the Movement.
> ======
>
> Given that HE brought the whole thing up about leaving, I think
> that HE was the one feeling guilty in the first place.
For the record, Chopra has offered several different versions in
different interviews as to the reasons for and chronology of his
decision to leave the movement. In some of those versions, he
was already thinking about leaving before this interview ever
took place.
If his account of what was said in this interview is accurate, it
could well be that he wasn't feeling guilty so much as looking
for a good opportunity to break the news to Maharishi that he was
going to leave, and picked this one.
I would take "stricken" with a large grain of salt. "Relieved"
is probably more like it.
Judy Stein
Andrew Skolnick <asko...@spam.block.mindspring.com> wrote:
<snip>
> I don't have to provide evidence that TM's anti-medicine "education" has
> an effect on TMers. The authors needed to show that it didn't.
No, they didn't. That had nothing to do with the objective or
conclusions of the study, at least as stated in the abstract.
<snip>
> It's pretty clear that TMers who would volunteer for a TM study have
> shown a remarkably strong inclination to believe TM claims.
No, that isn't clear at all.
> Hell, each one of them forked over at least $500 as a down
> payment on the Maharishi's promised bliss.
Amazing. Apparently Andrew believes that the study group should
have included non-TMers.
No doubt many or even most of the TMers in
> the study have given a lot more of their income and time to TM.
No, in fact there's no reason to make this assumption.
Without
> proving that the TM subjects reduced their visits to physicians because
> of TM teachings, the study isn't worth the paper it was printed on.
Wrong. *Why* the TM subjects reduced their visits to physicians
was entirely irrelevant to the study.
> > I mean, from what YOU are suggesting, some exceedingly high
> > percentage of TMers in the study must be doing MAV stuff.
>
> How many times to I have to tell you that it would only take 2 or 3 of
> the nearly 700 TMers in the study to be using MAK and panchakarma to
> surpass the reported savings in physician payments. To Lawson, .4%
> (four-tenths of one percent) is "some exceedingly high percentage."
But that isn't relevant to the study at all.
> The mean savings ranged from about $7 to about $50 per person per year
> over the 7-year follow-up period. TM's anti-medicine propaganda, warning
> TMers that modern medicine, unlike Maharishi Ayur-Veda, is hazardous and
> deadly could easily discourage TMers from going to a physician for minor
> or even moderate problems. It wouldn't take much of that to produce the
> supposed savings reported in this study.
Even if it did, it wouldn't be relevant.
[I deleted a line by accident here; I think Andrew was asking
about the price for MAV in Quebec.]
> Quebec? The study of course doesn't even raise this question. Whatever
> the amount is, many of the subjects in this study are probably the
> people using those products and services.
No, there's no reason to make this assumption.
Who is willing to bet me that
> those sales didn't go up as the visits to physicians went down?
Well, I'll bet you, Andrew. (My father used to say, "Never bet
on a sure thing." Wasn't sporting, as far as he was concerned,
and it wasn't any fun; no suspense.)
> Conducting a study that supposedly measures improvement in TMers' health
> by measuring useage of physician services, in my opinion, is just
> another cynical attempt to deceive people.
The study didn't claim to have measured improvement in TMers'
health, at least not in the abstract.
It gives the appearance that
> teaching people TM saves money and improves health.
That may be, but that conclusion would not be supported by the
study's results and was not claimed in the study, at least
not according to the abstract.
> > In the entire USA, only 5-10,000 people are talking the premier MAK
> > concoction, MAK, so you appear to be suggesting that this study managed to
> > find the equivalent of about 5-10% of the MAK users in the US?
> >
> > Wow. Talk about *effective* advertising.
>
> Huh? What are you talking about? The study involved TMers in Quebec
> Canada.
Read what Lawson wrote again, Andrew.
Judy Stein
Andrew Skolnick <asko...@mindspring.com> wrote:
<snip>
> You are soooo wrong, Lawson. It is not my obligation to prove that at
> least a few of the nearly 700 TMers in the study were using TM MAV
> health products or that a substantial number of them were scared away
> from seeking medical care by TM's anti-medicine propaganda -- these are
> perfectably reasonable possibilities that should have been addressed by
> the study's authors.
No, they shouldn't have been; these possibilities are entirely
irrelevant to what the study claimed to have shown.
They weren't. They are reasonable alternatives to
> explain the author's findings.
Alternatives to what? The authors did not give any explanation
for their findings, at least nothing that was mentioned in the
abstract.
And I find them more plausible than what
> the TM author's would have us believe -- that the practice of TM
> improves health and saves money.
The only claim made in the abstract was that those in the study
cost the Canadian government less. The abstract said nothing
about *why* they cost the government less, nor did it say
anything about saving money overall.
On the other hand, there are plenty of *other* published studies
that show TM practice improves health.
Judy Stein
"Lawson English" <eng...@primenet.com> wrote:
> Andrew Skolnick <asko...@mindspring.com> said:
>
> >Not at all. What is obvious (but not to Lawson) is that the authors of
> >the TM study supposedly measured the savings obtained by introducing an
> >intervention program (TM meditation). But the authors not only failed to
> >include the cost of the intervention program, they don't even mention
> >it!
>
> Fewer dollars were spent. As far as I can tell from the abstract of the
> published paper, that was all that was said. Perhaps the version that you
> obtained made more extravegant claims, but "fewer dollars were spent on
> physicians" is all that is claimed by the abstract.
Fewer dollars were spent on physicians BY THE CANADIAN
GOVERNMENT. It's crucial to include this, otherwise Andrew will
continue to push his red herring.
And the version he obtained, it would seem, did *not* make more
extravagant claims.
> A more interesting study might be devised to see just WHERE dollars were
> spent -hospitals, MAV treatments and programs, movies, etc. But the study
> (if you want to call it that -it was more like a survey of health-spending
> of people who had agreed to participate)
No, not health spending by the people who agreed to participate,
health spending by the Canadian government *on* the people who
agreed to participate.
merely showed that they spent
> fewer dollars using Canadian-government physicians after they learned to
> meditate than they did before they learned to meditate.
>
> The obvious thing to investigate is WHY were fewer dollars spent?
If you were interested in making health claims for TM, yes.
However--
> Where they spending more on MAV? Did they suddenly start hating Western
> medicine? Did they simply not get sick as much? Did they cross the border
> more often to get the commercial health care available in the US?
--as far as insurance companies and most likely also government
health care providers are concerned, why the Canadian government
had to spend fewer dollars is of less concern than *that* it had
to spend fewer dollars.
<snip>
> after-TM dollars-spent on physicians dropped an average of 5-7% per year
> for several years (up to 7) compared to pre-TM dollars spent, at least
> within the public health care system of Canada.
In other words, by the Canadian government.