Abstract
I have read the interesting article “Transcriptional Changes in Cancer Cells Induced by Exposure to a Healing Method” by Beseme et al. 1 However, some issues need to be clarified.
In this article, the authors propose that a particular method of cure (called the Bengston Healing Method—BHM) would have the ability to influence the transcription of DNA from cancer cells, directly by the imposition of hands, or indirectly through the application of “energized” cottons, or by simple transmission of audio from the “energizing session” of cottons.
The authors begin the article with a review on the BHM and its positive results, claiming that more than a dozen of the experiments were replicated in 6 independent laboratories. However, the references provided in the text (6 and 7) are self-citations and not independent work.
In the methods section, they propose to introduce an “energized” cotton roll on a cancer cell culture plate. As a control group, they were expected to place a piece of cotton that was not “energized.” Inexplicably, they did not use any cotton in the control plate, which weakens the experiment, since it cannot be ruled out that the simple presence of cotton can interfere with the biochemistry of the cell culture and, consequently, change the gene transcription.
Also in the methodology, when the authors test the expression of dozens of genes without applying any correction for multiple comparisons, there is a relevant increase in the type I error chance. I understand the justification that this is an exploratory study; however, this data analysis bias should have been clearly addressed in the manuscript, mainly because if we apply a remedy like the Bonferroni correction, for example, none of the experiments would reach statistical significance.
In the results, the authors could not make clear what magnitude of effect they considered relevant. For example, in the cotton test, they claim that an increase of less than 2 times was “modest” and therefore the 6 genes whose effect was statistically significant were ignored in the discussion. In the audio (R18) tests for the ACLY and IL1B genes, the vast majority of the data also fell below 2-fold increment or decrement (Tables 2 and 3), but in these cases they were valued.
Still in the results, according to experiment 1, in Table 2, the ACLY gene concentration increased after 24 hours of treatment (P = .003). However, the literature shows that ACLY does damage when it is increased, 2,3 what could mean that the BHM is actually harmful in some instances. Some comment on this is needed.
Finally, all authors stated no potential conflicts of interest. However, at least one of the authors (W.B.) seems to have some financial interest in the study results, since he sells books and courses related to the BHM. Therefore, I believe that his commercial relationships with the BHM should have been clearly described in the manuscript, according to the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors recommendations. 4