This Saturday. 23 September, the Chiang Mai Expats Club meets at the Shangri-la Hotel, Chang Klan Rd.

Gather at 10 am for 10:30 meeting start.

120 baht for members, 170 for guests; includes coffee or tea, ice water, sweet treat and fruit. Guest speaker is Dr. John Rogerson who will discuss today's health care and systems used, along with his own visual scanning system called energy field imaging and also hair profiling systems.

Information: [email protected] or www.chiangmaiexpatsclub.com

The Chiang Mai Expats Club meets every 4th Saturday of each month at the Shangri La Hotel, with a variety of guest speakers, an open forum, access to advice from experts on topics ranging from health care and insurance to visas. Plus, the members enjoy the Lucky Draw and book/DVD exchange. It's a fun way to meet fellow expats and to learn about Outside Group Activities and local resources.

I do hope you tell your members that "his own visual scanning system called energy field imaging" is not in fact accepted medicine and is in fact quackery.

The meeting was last Saturday and yes, one of the questions from the audience was about whether his methods have been documented in articles in peer reviewed journals. The short-form of the answer was "no". The "spin answer" from the speaker was something about how they see so much evidence that it works, i.e. antedotial reports and positive case histories that they "know" it works.

Those in the audience with any background in science understood the meaning of lack of documentation in peer reviewed journals. Others in the audience just wanted to know if they came to their home or do they go to an office, how many sessions they need, what does he charge, etc. They clearly weren't bothered about details like lack of peer review (and presumably lack of double-blind testing, although that question didn't specifically come up)

Remember there is a segment of the population that thinks western, "scientific" medicine has failed them and are looking for alternatives. Also, don't discount the placebo effect. In looking at his "before" and "after" images of clients who have been thru the program, it clealry seemed that they all lost weight, because part of what they do is to encourage healthy eating habits. There's some value to anything that encourages overweight people to loose weight.