It's kind of jarring to see Doctorow praise hypnosis in one paragraph and then excoriate tobacco companies for their science obscurationism in literally the next paragraph.
Why? Don’t get me wrong, there’s a lot of woo practitioners around hypnotism, but hypnotherapy does seem to have some scientific support (even if there’s ongoing debate). It’s not like he was having his auras aligned or anything.
He didn't make the claim that hypnosis was scientifically sound and better than other forms of medicine. He just said that he tried it and it worked for him. It seems entirely different from what tabacco companies do to me.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2752362/
https://www.thegutcentre.com/pdf/research/hypnotherapy-for-i...