On Wednesday, February 10th, Colorado State University's Health Network hosted its sixth annual Mind, Body, Spirit Fair.  According to their website, the fair is "designed to enhance participant’s awareness of complementary and alternative wellness practices related to the mind, body and spirit connection".  As the dedicated skeptics (read: party-crashing assholes) we are, Brian and I decided it might be interesting to check it out.  We showed up at around 9:30 am with a tape recorder and some brochures that I had made up the day before (in which I laid out, very briefly, the potential harm in taking untested medicine, especially in leiu of established health practices).

We didn't make it to the early events, but it doesn't appear as though we missed all that much.  According to the itinerary, some quack babbled about the "Quantum Field of all possibilities" for a while and someone else read auras with the help of colored bottles filled with herbs.  Apparently she had received inspiration for this method through prayer and meditation.  Need I say more?  Didn't think so.

We briefly stopped by a student panel on "Connecting Spirituality to the Earth's Environment", but after 10 minutes of sheer tedium, I was begging Brian to let us get the hell out of there.  None of the speakers made any attempt to comment on real issues; instead, they settled for throwing around vague phrases like "people need to appreciate the environment more" and "everything is about cycles".  One student kept harping on about how "everything has a soul--a spiritual energy".  (How does he know?  I mean, come on.)

Finally, the main event began at 1:00 pm, when around 50 vendors showed up to peddle their rabbit feet and snake oil to the unsuspecting hordes.  Brian broke out the tape recorder, and I began scanning the crowd for the most outrageous booths.  One table, bedecked in very scientific-looking graphs, held a monitor with a bleeping display.  I went to check it out while Brian headed over to the Laser Therapy booth. Ten minutes later, I still had no idea what I was supposed to be looking at, or why I should be convinced to buy one.  As far as I can tell, the machine was supposed to be able to accurately assess the condition of every one of your organs, just by having you hold a shiny metal bar.  When I asked the vendor what would happen if the machine were used on a dead person, he said all the results would show up as 'Perfect'.  He managed to keep a straight face when he said this, which led me to believe that he was actually serious.

Over at the Laser Therapy booth, Brian was interrogating the vendor about his multi-thousand dollar laser machine that was supposed to cure, well, everything.  After the seller spectacularly avoided answering most of our technical questions, Brian ventured to ask what the difference was between this laser thingy and any $5 laser pointer you can pick up at Office Depot.  "Well, nothing," the vendor admitted, "Except this one has a broader range."  So if you were thinking about dropping $8,000 on this machine, don't.

We visited most of the other booths over the course of the afternoon, but we were largely met with vague claims about "energy healing" and "spiritual enhancement".  At some point, it's just impossible to engage in useful conversation with these people.  If you believe that there's a floating aura surrounding your body, and I don't, there's not a whole lot to be said.  It was actually very annoying how careful most of the vendors were to make claims that could not possibly be refuted.  Even the psychics weren't really teaching you how to be psychic: it was all about personal potential, or something equally inane.

Around 4:00, I became too dead weary to go on any longer.  There was supposed to be a keynote speaker, and some other smaller events, but by God, I couldn't take any more.  My only hope is that most of the people who showed up realize that those treatments shouldn't replace real medicine.  And realistically, I think most people do realize that.   If something is seriously wrong with them, most everyone is still going to end up in a doctor's office at the end of the day.  It's only the serious nutjobs we have to be really concerned about.