No scientific basis exists for the notion of special vital forces or energy fields associated with living organisms. Medical journals should follow the lead of most scientific journals and not publish extraordinary claims without extraordinary evidence. One of the primary assumptions within Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM) is that living things possess a special energy field, linked to the cosmos, which I will call the bio-energetic field. "Pure energy" is viewed as a biophysical substance separate from and superseding matter. …