Survey of Therapeutic Touch “Research.”

Survey of . Therapeutic Touch "Research" Front Range Skeptics r r r r r r Survey of "Research" r on Therapeutic Touch r r Compiled by Linda Rosa, RN, Corresponding Secretary, r Front Range Skeptics r r r Originally Presented as a Report to the r Therapeutic Touch Review Committee, Health Sciences Center, University of Colorado r Presented 21 March 1994 r and (revised) 25 April 1994 Revised for Publication, March 1996 r Front Range Skeptics 711 W. 9th Street Loveland, Colorado 80537 [ (970) 669-7194 r r r r r r r r Credibility Therapeutic Touch does have a proven record of being able to help or heal those in need. r -Dolores Krieger, New York University No one and no thing can heal another human being. All healing is creative emergence, r new birth, the manifestation of the powerful inner longing, at every level, to be whole. Yet there is a role for nurses. We can remove barriers to the healing process .... We can, literally, become the healing environment. r -Janet Quinn, University of Colorado Health Sciences Center The pretense of the healers that they perform scientific therapies is unconscionable. In our struggle to achieve academic recognition as a profession, we simply cannot afford to r indulge in this kind of charlatanism. Therapeutic Touch challenges the validity of mod em nursing research, teaching and practice. If its practitioners insist on their healing roles, let them honestly call themselves faith healers and stop claiming they are nurses who heal. -Myra Levine, Nursing Theorist r r r r r r r r Preface to 1996 Edition r In January, 1992, the presenter of this Survey went before the Colorado State Board of Nursing to object to the awarding of continuing-education credit to nurses for courses of fered in various unproven "alternative-care" techniques (also called "New Age" thera pies, health fads, and nurse quackery). She asked that stricter oversight be given by the Board over the content of such materials. She was turned down. This Survey is one end r result of being turned down. Curiously, the justification made by the Board to tum down the skeptical request before them was that there is a "increasing volume of research and clinical literature" which es tablished the efficacy of a single practice called "Therapeutic Touch" (TT). Immediately all the other practices complained of dropped away and all attention centered upon this r one practice. A subsequent request of the Board to document this "research" was an swered with a reading list prepared by a University of Colorado nursing professor, Janet r Quinn. An analysis 1 of Quinn's reading list showed so little true research, so much padding, and r such sparse academic support, that skeptical attention was turned onto the CU School of Nursing, a tax-supported institution. It was discovered that the place was a hotbed of ac tivity in TT and other alternative "caring" therapies. 2 Since it was generating academic respectability for these practices (not to mention claims of "volumes of clinical re search"), and was doing so with a cloak of scientific respectability, it was decided that r some challenge needed to be mounted. A skeptic's request for a hearing in the summer of 1993, made to CU' s Board of Regents, r led to the Chancellor of the Health Sciences Center appointing an "Academic Relevance" Committee. The recommendation of that Committee was that another "blue-ribbon" in vestigation be empaneled to determine the scientific basis of TT. The idea was that, if r there was a scientific basis for TT, then it should be continued to be taught at the School of Nursing; if not, then it should no longer be taught. The panel was formed and chaired r by Dr. Henry Claman, a Distinguished Professor of immunology at CU. The analysis made of Quinn's reading list was expanded and re-organized to become a report on the scientific (or pseudo-scientific) findings used to support TT. This report r was handed to Dr. Claman's committee in March, 1994. At a public hearing held by him r a month later, a revision was presented. 1 See Annex B. 2 A recounting of the entire process in some detail, along with a history of the development of TI. can be found in Rosa r (1994c). r -i- 7 In August, 1994, Dr. Claman's committee reported. Among other things, he and his committee found: 7 To date, there is not a sufficient body of data, both in quality and quantity, to establish 7 TT as a unique and efficacious healing modality ... This lack of data and consequently the perceived uncertainties ... brings the potential to have a negative effect on the stature and reputation of the School of Nursing. Qualitative judgments and evaluation are not suffi cient to document and establish TT as an efficacious therapeutic or healing modality .... lf 1 an effect is observable, it can be measured. It is not adequate to state that TT involves mechanisms which exist beyond the five senses and which therefore cannot be proven by ordinary methods. Such comments are a disservice to science and the practice of healing 7 and demonstrate a commitment to metaphysics and the mystical view of life rather than to a scientific or rational view of life .... It is inappropriate in the context of a heal th sci - ence center to teach and practice TT for another 20 years in the absence of validation of 1 TT as an efficacious healing modality. Although TI practitioners state that the existence and nature of the [human] energy field l is an hypothesis which has not been confirmed in over 20 years, in practice they behave as if the energy field were a perceptible reality. There is virtually no acceptable scientific evidence concerning the existence or nature of these energy fields. There is no ongoing 7 research on this concept at the Center for Human Caring, nor are there any plans for such research, nor even any ideas about how such research might be conducted. 7 This last insight of the Committee is profound. TT early became inextricably intwined with the notion of healing energy. When pressed, advocates will deny the necessity for its existence, or for any underlying theory of cause and effect for that matter. But when l they work at selling it to the lay public, they are drawn irresistably back to its roots. In the words of TT' s founder (long before the bulk of the research reported here had been 7 conceived): We are literally throughputsof energy. A healer's effectiveness doesn't depend on any 7 hokus-pokus. It depends on his or her ability to direct energy. Listening to the partisans, one becomes convinced that it is more important to them that 7 their underlying beliefs be accepted than that the intervention be truly effective. In other words, a demonstration of the efficaciousness of TT is important only as a validation of their world-view, of which the keystone is the notion of healing energy. TT can be view l ed more as a religious tenet, be it a derivative of Theosophy, Taoism, Hinduism, or some New Age amalgam. For a tax-supported institution, this religious aspect raises additional concerns related to constitutional principles on the separation of church and state. l In spite of all this, TT is still being taught at CU. The original recommendation for a sci 7 entific standard was scrapped and a test of "academic freedom" was substituted. By this revised standard, it was determined that TT could not be sent off campus.3 l 3 The Claman committee's finding, in its entirety, can be found in Annex D. 7 -ii- 7 r Skeptics, of course, were disappointed in the final result, but have taken some cheer in the scientific findings of the Claman Committee. If nothing else, it has exposed TI to be scientifically baseless in both its theoretical underpinnings and its clinical evidence. TT practitioners and New Age adherents have trumpeted the Claman decision as a vindi cation of their practices. They should not. In the scientific sense, TI is baseless and use r less. If science is any guide, then ultimately, all connected with TI will be embarrassed and discredited. What is in the pages of this document shows why that will be true. It will be curious to see when the time comes how the medical/nursing establishment ex r plain away their taciturnity. Their lack of challenge has already emboldened Dolores Krieger to declare, "There is validity to Therapeutic Touch. Otherwise we would have been burned as witches long ago." [Jaroff (1994)] A number of studies published since the initial compilation have been added to this edi r tion. The dates of publication reveal which these are (essentially anything after 1992). Linda Rosa, RN r Loveland, Colorado r March,1996 r r r r r r r r r -iii- l Preface to Original Report 7 The creation of the present Committee is a direct result of a report of the Academic Rele l vance Committee reviewing the affairs of the Center for Human Caring (associated with the School of Nursing within the Health Sciences Center of the University of Colorado). l That report, submitted to Chancellor Vincent Fulginetti and passed along to (and favor ably received by) the Board of Regents of CU, made the following recommendation: 7 7. Our Committee believes that the following should be done with regard to Therapeutic Touch. The Chancellor and the Dean of the School of Nursing should appoint a special committee of investigators to carefully read the very extensive literature on this subject, l to view all the videos and relevant course material, and to witness actual demonstrations of this technique.

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