Craniosacral Therapy Is Not Medicine

To the Editor: Although the prescientific thinking emblematic of most “alternative” health care may lead infrequently to fortuitous insights, many of these techniques have been tested, have failed, and should be abandoned. For example, we have observed in our laboratory and described in Scientific Review of Alternative Medicine 1 one of the manipulation procedures (craniosacral therapy/cranial osteopathy) used by many physical therapists, occupational therapists, osteopathic physicians, and others. Based on our observations, we have drawn several conclusions. We believe that Sutherland's Primary Respiratory Mechanism is invalid. “Cranial” rhythms cannot be generated through organic motility of brains because neurons and glial cells lack the dense arrays of actin and myosin filaments …