ARTICLES IN SUPPORT OF DISTANCE HEALING

"Scores of controlled studies have demonstrated the correlation of positive mental intent with physiological effects in distant human beings." - Larry Dossey, M.D.

Western Journal of Medicine Abstract 1998 Dec

Sicher, F; Targ, E; Moore, D 2nd; Smith, HS. A randomized double-blind study of the effect of distant healing in a population with advanced AIDS. Report of a small scale study. Western Journal of Medicine, 1998 Dec, 169(6):356-63.

Various forms of distant healing (DH), including prayer and "psychic healing," are widely practiced, but insufficient formal research has been done to indicate whether such efforts actually affect health. We report on a double-blind randomized trial of DH in 40 patients with advanced AIDS. DH treatment was performed by self-identified healers representing many different healing and spiritual traditions. Healers were located throughout the United States during the study, and subjects and healers never met. At 6 months, a blind medical chart review found that treatment subjects acquired significantly fewer new AIDS-defining illnesses, had lower illness severity, and required significantly fewer doctor visits, fewer hospitalizations, and fewer days of hospitalization. Treated subjects also showed significantly improved mood compared with controls. These data support the possibility of a DH effect in AIDS and suggest the value of further research.

DISTANT INTENTIONALITY AND HEALING
Larry Dossey, M.D. ©

Why should modern medicine concern itself with distant intentionality or distant healing? (Dossey, 2000) One might argue that such phenomena, even if they exists, ought to be set aside in favor of less challenging questions, such as whether or not one's thoughts can affect one's own body. There are compelling reasons to set our sights on the more elusive quarry at the outset. If distant effects of mental intentionality exist, we shall have to deal with them sooner or later, whether we like it or not. If we acknowledge them up front, they may lend a comprehensiveness to our thinking about the dynamics of consciousness which otherwise would be sacrificed. Acknowledging these phenomena early on might spare us at some later date the difficulty of retrofitting our models of the mind in order to accommodate them, or perhaps having to scuttle our models altogether.

SIX QUESTIONS
In asking whether or not prayer or mental intentions can bring about changes in distant individuals, let's ask six questions. The evidence provided following each question is not exhaustive, but is intended to only suggest an answer.

(1) Does an effect exist? Is it possible - in principle - for individuals to influence, at a distance, the physiological function of a living organism?

(a) Ten subjects tried to inhibit the growth of fungus cultures in the laboratory through conscious intent by concentrating on them for fifteen minutes from a distance of approximately 1.5 yards. The cultures were then incubated for several more hours. Of a total of 194 culture dishes, 151 showed retarded growth (Barry, 1968). (b) In a replication of this study, one group of subjects demonstrated the same effect (inhibiting the growth of fungal cultures) in sixteen of sixteen trials, while stationed from one to fifteen miles away (Tedder and Monty, 1981). (c) Sixty subjects not known to have such abilities were able both to impede and stimulate significantly the growth of cultures of bacteria (Nash, 1982). (d) Sixty university volunteers were asked to alter the ability of a strain of the bacterium Escherichia coli to utilize lactose. This strain normally mutates from the inability to metabolize lactose ("lactose negative") to the ability to use it ("lactose positive") at a known rate. The subjects tried to influence nine test tubes of bacterial cultures - three for increased mutation from lactose negative to lactose positive, three for decreased mutation of lactose negative to lactose positive, and three tubes uninfluenced as controls. The bacteria mutated in the directions desired by the subjects (Nash, 1984). (e) Seven subjects - two spiritual healers, one physician who was interested in and believed in spiritual healing, and four students with neither experience nor interest in healing - were asked to increase the growth of yeast in test tubes "by the mental method of his choice." 240 test tubes were used -- 120 for the mental intent, 120 for controls. The spiritual healers and the believing physician produced significant results (p<0.00014) and the indifferent students produced chance results (Haraldsson and Thorsteinsson, 1973).

(2) Can such an effect influence intact animals?

In twenty-one experiments conducted over a period of several years, healers tried to awaken mice more quickly from general anesthesia. These experiments were increasingly refined. In one variation, only the image of the experimental mouse was projected on a television monitor to the healer in a distant room, who tried to intervene mentally via the image. Nineteen of the twenty-one studies showed highly significant results: earlier recovery from anesthesia in the mice to whom positive mental intent was extended (Watkins and Watkins, 1971; Watkins, Watkins, and Wells, 1973; Wells and Klein, 1972; Wells and Watkins, 1975). In a controlled experiment, a noncontact form of "laying on of hands" was employed in an attempt to cure mice of transplanted mammary adenocarcinoma. Three replications were done. Overall, 29 of 33 experimental mice (87.9 percent) were cured of the cancer, compared to 18 of 26 control mice on site (69l2 percent) and 0 of 8 control mice off site (0 percent). Later reinjection of tumor cells in treated, cured mice did not take (Bengston and Krinsley, 2000). Researchers injected 60 mice with a tumoral suspension. Half of the mice were treated with "negative PK" for 20 sessions and half were not, and the weight and volume of tumor growth was measured. The treated mice showed significantly less tumor growth than untreated mice (P <0.01) (Onetto and Elguin, 1966).

(3) Can such an effect influence biochemical processes in humans? Blood platelets isolated from healthy human volunteers were treated by a healer, who tried to influence the activity of the enzyme monoamine oxidase (MAO). MAO activity was measured before and after the mental intent in both intact and disrupted cells. The overall effect was to increase the variability of MAO activity relative to untreated control samples (p<0.001) (Rein, 1985).

(4) Can such an effect influence human tissue?

Thirty-two subjects mentally attempted to prevent the hemolysis of human red blood cells (RBCs) in test tubes containing a hypotonic saline solution, as measured by standard spectrophotometric techniques. Significant differences were found between the "prevent" and control tubes (p<1.91x10-5) (Braud, 1988).

(5) Can such an effect influence intact humans ?

Scores of controlled studies have demonstrated the correlation of positive mental intent with physiological effects in distant human beings. This material has been the subject of several reviews (Benor, 1990, 1993; Dossey, 1993; Solfvin, 1984). Among the studies: (a) In a double-blind experiment involving 393 persons admitted to a coronary care unit, intercessory prayer was offered from a distance to roughly half the subjects. Significantly fewer patients in the prayer group required intubation/mechanical ventilation (p<0.002) or antibiotics (p<0.005), had cardiopulmonary arrests (p<0.02), developed pneumonia (p<0.03), or required diuretics (p<0.005). Subjects in the prayer group had a significantly lower "severity score" based on their hospital course following admission (p<0.01) (Byrd, 1988). (b) In a double-blind experiment involving 990 consecutive patients who were admitted to the coronary care unit (CCU), patients were randomized to receive remote, intercessory prayer or not. The first names of patients in the prayer group were given to a team of outside intercessors who prayed for them daily for 4 weeks. Patients were unaware they were being prayed for, and the intercessors did not know and never met the patients. The medical course from hospital admission to discharge was summarized in a CCU course score derived from blinded, retrospective chart review. The prayed-for group had about a 10 percent advantage compared to the usual-care group (P = .04) (Harris et al, 1999). (c) In a double-blind experiment involving 40 patients with advanced AIDS, subjects were randomly assigned to a "distant healing" (DH) group or to a control group. Both groups were treated with conventional medications, but the DH group received distant healing for 10 weeks from healers located throughout the United States. Subjects and healers never met. At 6 months, blind chart review found that DH subjects acquired significantly fewer new AIDS-defining illnesses (P = 0.04), had lower illness severity (P = 0.03), and required significantly fewer doctor visits (P = 0.01), fewer hospitalizations (P 0.04), and fewer days of hospitalization (P =0.04). DH subjects also showed significantly improved mood compared with controls (P = 0.02) (Sicher et al, 1998). (d) In thirteen experiments, the ability of sixty-two people to influence the physiology of 271 distant subjects was studied (Braud and Schlitz, 1983,1988,1989). These studies suggested that (1) the distant effects of mental imagery compare favorably with the magnitude of effects of one's individual thoughts, feelings, and emotions on one's own physiology; (2) the ability to use positive imagery to achieve distant effects is apparently widespread in the human population; (3) these effects can occur at distances up to twenty meters (greater distances were not tested); (4) subjects with a greater need to be influenced by positive mental intent - i.e., those for whom the influence would be beneficial -- seem more susceptible; (5) the distant effects of intentionality can occur without the recipient's knowledge; (6) those participating in the studies seemed unconcerned that the effect could be used for harm, and no such harmful effects were seen; and (7) the distant effects of mental intentionality are not invariable; subjects appear capable of preventing the effect if it is unwanted.

(6) Are these effects limited to human intentionality, or are they widespread in nature?

Claims that humans can achieve distant effects through mental intention is often met with skepticism and derision. These objections might be tempered if it can be shown that this ability is present in nonhuman species as well. Although we do not know what animals think and whether or not they are really intending, there nonetheless is evidence suggesting that "animal consciousness," however it may be defined, is capable of manifesting at a distance in ways not unlike those seen in humans. (a) Researchers tested the possible influence of 80 groups of 15 chicks on a randomly moving robot carrying a lighted candle in an otherwise darkened room. Baby chicks prefer to be in the presence of light; could this preference somehow influence the movement of the candle-carrying robot? In 71% of the cases, the robot spent excessive time in the vicinity of the chicks. In the absence of the chicks, the robot followed random trajectories. The overall results were statistically significant (p<0.01) (Peoc'h, 1988,1995). (b) Researchers collected fifty-four accounts of animals who returned to their owners, sometimes over colossal distances. These instances were unexplainable by sensory cues or by homing instincts; the animals often traveled to places they had never been. These instances suggest some form of extended awareness (Dossey, 1989, p. 112; Rhine and Feather, 1962).

EXPLAINABLE BY SUGGESTION?
The distant effects of intentionality suggested herein cannot easily be explained by placebo-type influences such as suggestion and expectation. These studies are generally double-blind in design. Moreover, most of the studies in this field examine the distant effects of intentionality not on other humans but on lower organisms (bacteria, yeast, fungi), cells (red blood cells or other types of tissue), plants (germinating seeds, growing seedlings), rats, and mice. These organisms are assumed to be immune to the effects of suggestion and expectation, and they presumably do not think positively (Dossey, 1993).

This is an excerpt from the complete article and has been reprinted with kind permission of Larry Dossey, MD, a physician and author of several books on spirituality and healing, including Healing Words, Reinventing Medicine, and Healing Beyond The Body.

For other sources of research on distant healing scientific studies you may wish to view:

http://www.goodsamiam.com/distant_healing_research.htm

http://wholistichealingresearch.com

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