'Does it work?' Holistic Healers and Assessing Breast Cancer Treatment

This research was looking at how practitioners of complementary and religious healing from the Boston area in USA who work with women with breast cancer define themselves the efficacy of their therapies. Since they define healing goals in only general terms, it is difficult to pinpoint objectively which specific factors contribute to healing. The question of what was most effective – acupuncture, herbs, or proper breathing – is thus difficult to answer. On the other hand, since CAM healing practices are, for the most part, not standardized procedures and are highly individualized and customized, they give the impression that it is possible to come to some kind of generalizations about efficacy only with great difficulties. Clinical assessments of efficacy therefore need to devise new, yet scientifically impeccable, methods of determining the successful outcomes of CAM practices that could accommodate the intricate complexity of the CAM healing process.