Surprising Laboratory study with question mark
Ein Heiler streckt die Hände über eine Schale voller Krebszellen aus, hält dabei 15 bis 67 Zentimeter Abstand. Kein Medikament, keine Strahlung, keine Berührung. Wochen später sind die Zellen träger, die Tumore in den Mäusen kleiner, Metastasen in der Leber seltener. Klingt nach Jahrmarkt. Steht aber im angesehenen Fachblatt Cancer Medicine – bestätigt von Wissenschaftlern eines renommierten Krebsforschungszentrums, abgesegnet durch Peer Review.
The setting for this astonishing series of experiments was not just any wellness center, but the MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, Texas—a world-leading institution in oncology. There, researchers led by Peiying Yang and Lorenzo Cohen exposed cells of ductal pancreatic
adenocarcinoma—the most aggressive form of pancreatic cancer, which kills four out of five patients within five years—to so-called “biofield therapy,” a form of the laying on of hands.
Three different healers followed a standardized protocol. The researchers compared treated cells with two control groups: a genuine control kept in an incubator and a sham control—cells over which someone merely pretended to perform healing.
This measure was designed to rule out simple heat or placebo effects. Then came the measurements. Not belief—measurement.
The therapist does not make physical contact—yet the cells still react.
The treated cancer cells divided more slowly. Their mitochondria—the cell’s powerhouses—swelled.
Cell division stalled at an early stage. A gene named FOXM1, which acts like an accelerator for cancer growth, was downregulated. The cells became less aggressive—less capable of invading
neighboring tissue. The electrical voltage across the cell membrane—yes, every cell maintains a tiny voltage difference between its interior and exterior—dropped by 36.7 percent.
The study does not reveal whether this is the cause, a side effect, or simply a precursor to cell death. In living mice, tumors shrank and liver metastases decreased. All of this was statistically significant—meaning the differences can hardly be dismissed as
coincidence. Cells know nothing of esoteric concepts. They are neither credulous nor skeptical—they simply do what they do. For now, the honest answer to the question of what actually happened is: We don’t know.
And now, the reality check. The research here was conducted on cells and mice—not a single human being was treated. The path from the Petri dish to the clinic is littered with the wreckage of dashed hopes; most “promising” findings in mice come to nothing when tested on humans.
While a placebo effect can be ruled out in the case of cancer cells, the same cannot be said for laboratory artifacts or the influence of the experimenters’ own expectations.
Furthermore, there is no mechanism that makes sense to medical professionals. No one can say what physical force is supposedly flowing from the palms of the hands. And anyone measuring what they hope to find must be particularly rigorous with themselves—when dealing with such fringe findings, replication by independent, uninvolved laboratories is not merely optional; it is mandatory
Rapid-fire image carousel: the “Bengston Method”
The Bengston Energy Healing Method employed here is a form of energy healing—a type of “laying on of hands”—in which a practitioner attempts to stimulate a healing process without the use of medication, instruments, or physical contact in the medical sense. (1) It was developed by the American William Bengston—not a medical professional, but a sociology professor at St. Joseph’s College in New York who earned his doctorate at Fordham University, specializing in statistics and research methods. He taught there for around 40 years. From 2010 to 2022, Bengston served as president of the Society for Scientific Exploration, an organization that investigates scientific anomalies. In 2010, he published the popular-science autobiography The Energy Cure. Throughout his life, Bengston was a fascinating figure straddling the boundaries of different worlds: a trained scientist with a serious interest in controlled experiments, yet also the originator of a healing method whose purported mechanism of transmission remains a mystery to this day and whose clinical efficacy is unproven. Bengston died on April 16, 2025, at the age of 75.
The core of the Bengston method is known as “Image Cycling.” In this process, the practitioner first compiles a list of around 20 personal goals—such as those related to health, career, or life dreams—translates each into an internal image, and then spins these images rapidly in their mind, like a mental film loop. The underlying idea is that healing does not come from focusing on the sick person; rather, this racing stream of images is intended to trigger an “energy flow” through the hands.
Bengston describes his technique as “belief-free,” meaning that belief in its efficacy is not a prerequisite; even skeptics can act as healers. From the outset, Bengston sought to operate within a laboratory setting rather than an esoteric practice. Over the course of more than 35 years, he has investigated the method’s efficacy through ten controlled animal studies at seven university laboratories; he claims to have achieved the first “complete cures” of transplanted breast cancer and chemically induced soft-tissue tumors in laboratory mice. The cured mice reportedly remained permanently immune thereafter.
All of this is highly controversial within the scientific community. No physical mechanism explaining how such “biofields” might operate is known, and most publications on the subject have appeared in niche fringe-science journals.
It is all the more remarkable, then, that a renowned cancer center has now brought this principle into the laboratory. The fact that Bengston’s principle has found its way into a reputable publication—that is the real news here.
Note
(1) For further details, see H. Wiesendanger: Das Große Buch vom Geistigen Heilen – Möglichkeiten, Grenzen, Gefahren (The Great Book of Spiritual Healing: Possibilities, Limitations, and Dangers).
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