Magnets

Excerpts from an article in the December 9, 1997 New York Times,
Study on Using Magnets to Treat Pain Surprises Skeptics, by Lawrence Altman, MD

Aware of the medical profession's skepticism about magnet therapy, Vallbona sought to conduct science's most rigorous type of study. Participants would agree to allow the investigators to randomly assign them to groups getting treatment with active magnets or sham devices. But neither the patients nor the doctors treating them would know what therapy was used on which patient. First, Vallbona informally tested magnets on a few patients. One was a priest with post-polio syndrome who celebrated mass with difficulty due to marked back pain that prevented him from raising his left hand. After applying a magnet for a few minutes the pain was gone, Vallbona recalled, and, "the priest said this was a miracle." Then a human experimentation committee allowed Vallbona to test 50 volunteers with magnets that at 300 to 500 gauss, were slightly stronger than refrigerator magnets. They were made in different sizes so they could fit over the anatomic area identified as setting off their pain.

It was difficult to design a system to prevent participants from learning whether they were being treated with a magnet or a sham. So Vallbona asked Magnaflex Inc., a magnet manufacturer in Corpus Christi, Texas, to prepare active magnets and inactive devices that could not be told apart. The devices were labeled in code. As a further precaution, a staff member observed the patients throughout the 45-minute period of therapy to make sure they would not try to find out -- by testing with a paper clip, say -- what treatment they were receiving. After the investigators identified the source of the pain and then pressed on it, the 39 women and 11 men in the study graded the pain on a scale of 0 (none) to 10 (worst). Then after the experimental treatment, the participants rated their pain in a standard questionnaire.

The volunteers were tested only one time. The 29 who received an active magnet reported a reduction in pain to 4.4 from 9.6, compared with a smaller decline to 8.4 from 9.5 among the 21 treated with a sham magnet. The Baylor scientists emphasized that their study applied only to pain from the post-polio condition. Nevertheless, their report in last month's issue of Archives of Physical and Rehabilitation Medicine, a leading specialty journal, has shocked many doctors who have scoffed at claims for magnets' medical benefits. ...

Magnets' medical benefits have been proclaimed for centuries. So why has it taken so long to do studies to begin to answer the questions? The reasons involve economic, political, professional and human factors. Many doctors criticize the lucrative magnet industry for not investing in studies the way drug companies often do. "They don't do simple research," Jarvis said, and "it is hard to imagine an easier study to conduct than a magnet one for pain." Yet doctors share the responsibility to do such research, and only rarely have they reported undertaking the scientifically controlled studies needed to settle major disputes about reported therapies. In many such debates, doctors demand a biological explanation for a therapy's benefits. Without documentation that satisfies them, doctors may summarily reject the claims. Yet in their everyday practices, the same doctors may use other therapies that lack scientific proof for why they work. ...