Andy Kaufman died using alternative healing methods; so how can you say they work?
That is the fallacy of a complex question. It assumes that if one dies while using a modality that that proves the approach is completely bogus.
That is just not true. The current leading cause of deaths in the United States by the governments statistics is standard medical treatment. That does not say that standard medical treatment is bogus. It, all agree, has its place.
One notable death during alternative treatments should not be held up as a broad brush dismissal of alternatives. They have their place. And no matter what modality people choose or modality combination they use, everyone by a law of nature will die.
That being said we will now consider what might have been the issue in the death of Andy Kaufman.
He was a nonsmoker, a meditator, and a health food person, and developed lung cancer.
In Chinese medicine they say that when some one is sad that sadness resides in the lungs causing lung problems. Without going into details here Kaufman was depressed and sad because of the way he lost his place on the Saturday Night Live TV show. It is from the Chinese view point that the lung cancer may have come from the mind, sadness. He appears to have never shed that sadness.
While not all smokers get lung cancer, not all sad people get lung cancers. Lung problems may manifest in other ways. (And this is not to say that all lung problems come from sadness.)
The Chinese theory reminds me of Dr. Wayne Dyer who said and wrote a book I believe with the title “all problems are spiritual”.
[This is why I prefer augmented reconnective style healing (ARH). It allows the universe/God to deal with the deeper problem and not necessarily the presenting problem. It finds and deals with the correct problem in the body, mind and/or spirit. (See now the page on ARH for more info.) ]
This sadness may have put Kaufman in the position of constantly feeding cancer generation in his lungs. This would have made any healing only superficial because the cause of the cancer was never addressed.
Salomon said as a man thinks so he is. In this sadness Kaufman may have inadvertently been thinking cancerous thoughts. Dr. Joseph Murphy wrote I believe that if you have cancer you are thinking cancerous thoughts.
Now we might combine Chinese philosophy, Salomon, Dyer, and Murphy. Eliminate the cancerous thoughts and eliminate the cancer. Kaufman had not done this. So, maybe this is why the cancer festered and he died.
The standard medical community may dismiss this possibility because they can not put it into a test tube.
However even they admit that all that is beneficial to healing can not be put in a test tube. For example, the medical community knows that a patient in a loving relationship has a better out come than one who is not. Put that in a test tube. They know that one with a positive expectation has generally a better out come. Put that in a test tube.
Also Kaufman was trying every alternative that he could find. If something new came up, he would do that. He was not deciding to believe that some treatment or combined treatment was what would,work for him. He kept looking for the one new magic bullet, the one that would work.
This presents a number of,problems. Remember Salomon maxim, as you think in your heart … Each time he grasped at something new, he was inadvertently saying in his heart that he needed the new one because the old,one did not work for him. So it was so; he thought it.
As you think in your heart … Running to each new treatment, he on some level thought the before treatment(s) did not work for him. As a man thinketh in his heart so is he.
Kaufman, whether the old treatment(s) were are were not effective, nixed the treatment(s).
Jesus said, all things are possible to him that believeth, that is keeps on believing. Kaufman had ceased to believe in the treatment(s) as seen in his grasping for the new one. He nixed the treatment with doubts. James in the Bible said the one who doubts should not expect anything.
Kaufman may not have died because ineffectual alternative treatments. So the answer to the original question of this article is that the death of Kaufman may have nothing to do with the effectiveness of any alternative treatment.
See now my several pages on alternative healings, ARH, pendulum, Eeman, hypnosis/autogenics. You will find more info there.
Nothing here is intended to replace the advice of licensed medical or psychological workers.
