Therapeutic touch


Therapeutic touch, known by some as "non-contact therapeutic touch", is a pseudoscientific energy therapy which practitioners claim promotes healing and reduces pain and anxiety. "Therapeutic Touch" is a registered trademark in Canada for the "tructured and standardized healing practice performed by practitioners trained to be sensitive to the receiver's energy field that surrounds the body;...no touching is required."
Practitioners of therapeutic touch state that by placing their hands on, or near, a patient, they are able to detect and manipulate what they say is the patient's energy field. One highly cited study, designed by the then-nine-year-old Emily Rosa and published in the Journal of the American Medical Association in 1998, found that practitioners of therapeutic touch could not detect the presence or absence of a hand placed a few inches above theirs when their vision was obstructed. Simon Singh and Edzard Ernst concluded in their 2008 book Trick or Treatment that "the energy field was probably nothing more than a figment in the imaginations of the healers". The American Cancer Society noted, "Available scientific evidence does not support any claims that TT can cure cancer or other diseases." A 2004 Cochrane review found no good evidence that it helped with wound healing, but the authors withdrew it in 2016 "due serious concerns over the validity of included studies".

Origin and foundations

, a theosophy promoter and one-time president of the Theosophical Society in America, and Dolores Krieger, now Professor Emerita of Nursing Science, New York University, developed therapeutic touch in the 1970s. According to Krieger, therapeutic touch has roots in ancient healing practices, such as the laying on of hands, although it has no connection with religion or with faith healing. Krieger states that, "in the final analysis, it is the healee who heals himself. The healer or therapist, in this view, acts as a human energy support system until the healee's own immunological system is robust enough to take over".
Justification for TT has been sought in two fields: Martha E. Rogers' contemporal "Science of Unitary Human Beings", and quantum mechanics, in particular Fritjof Capra's mystical interpretation of the latter. A 2002 review found that neither justification was tenable: Rogers' theories were found to be inconsistent with the tenets of TT, while the overlap in terminology between the two could be ascribed to a lack of precision in Rogers' works, making them multi-interpretable. The quantum physics justification holds that the possibility to heal at a distance is possible due to a "global interconnectivity" of the universe, which is connected by TT adherents to an interpretation of Bell's theorem and the possibility of quantum nonlocality; this interpretation is not supported by experimental evidence. The 2002 study concluded that "the theory TT possesses is deprived of explanatory power" and "evidence that supports the current picture of physical energy should be regarded as evidence against the theory of TT".
The supposed healing in TT takes place via a discredited physical process called "electron transfer resonance", which physicist Alan Sokal describes as "nonsense".

Scientific investigations

Over the decades, many studies have been performed to investigate TT's efficacy, as well as various meta-analyses and at least one systematic review, yielding varying results and conclusions. O'Mathúna et al., in discussing these studies, note several problems, such as failure to exclude methodologically flawed studies and a susceptibility to the publication bias of complementary medicine journals, which carry a "preponderance of studies with positive results"; they argue that
Emily Rosa, at 9 years of age, conceived and executed a study on therapeutic touch. With the help of Stephen Barrett from Quackwatch, and with the assistance of her mother, Linda Rosa, RN, Emily became the youngest research team member to have a paper accepted by the Journal of the American Medical Association for her part in a study of therapeutic touch, which debunked the claims of therapeutic touch practitioners. Twenty-one practitioners of therapeutic touch participated in her study, and they attempted to detect her aura. The practitioners stood on one side of a cardboard screen, while Emily stood on the other. The practitioners then placed their hands through holes in the screen. Emily flipped a coin to determine which of the practitioner's hands she would place hers near. The practitioners then were to indicate if they could sense her biofield, and where her hand was. Although all of the participants had asserted that they would be able to do this, the actual results did not support their assertions. After repeated trials the practitioners had succeeded in locating her hand at a rate not significantly different from chance. JAMA editor George D. Lundberg, M.D, recommended that patients and insurance companies alike refuse to pay for therapeutic touch or at least question whether or not payment is appropriate "until or unless additional honest experimentation demonstrates an actual effect."
There is no good medical evidence for the effectiveness of therapeutic touch. A Cochrane systematic review, first published in 2004, found "here is no robust evidence that TT promotes healing of acute wounds" but in 2016 the authors retracted it after the validity of the reviewed studies were questioned. The American Cancer Society noted, "Available scientific evidence does not support any claims that TT can cure cancer or other diseases."

Skeptical View of Therapeutic Touch

When examining the existing literature on therapeutic touch, it has been observed that these studies tend to only cite research that favours the desired findings. There have been studies focused on therapeutic touch that have failed to include any research that have contradictory findings, however it is very important for studies such as these to report all results found from other studies even if they may contradict the present study’s hypothesis.
Using the appropriate controls in studies such as those on therapeutic touch are very important. There have been studies such as that by Grad, Cadoret, and Paul that have appeared to have successful results in showing the effectiveness of therapeutic touch upon first glance, yet once replicated using the appropriate controls showed to have nonsignificant results therefore rendering the original results inconclusive.
Researcher bias has shown to appear in studies examining therapeutic touch such as that by Turner, in which he included statements like “If we can successfully complete this study, this will be the first real scientific evidence there is for therapeutic touch”. It is important for researchers not to bias the results in order to achieve their desired outcome as it can drastically influence the true effectiveness of the therapy such as that of therapeutic touch.
Replication is another important factor that should be taken into account when examining studies such as those focused on therapeutic touch. A study on therapeutic touch by Wirth may have appeared to have successful results in which more than half of the subjects being treated by this therapy had healed by day 16 with no healing shown in the control group, however, on closer examination of this study it is revealed that there were several trials to test therapy over which only 2 of the 5 trials were successful and the control group actual healed as well or better than the treatment group in the other 3 trials. This makes the results of such a study inconclusive in showing any effectiveness to therapeutic touch.

Therapeutic touch and nursing education

Sokal, in 2006, reported generally accepted estimates of over 80 colleges and universities spread over 70 countries where therapeutic touch is taught, as well as some 80 hospitals in North America where it is practiced. He added that "these figures should be taken with a grain of salt, inasmuch as both advocates and detractors have an interest in exaggerating its incidence".
Owen Hammer and James Underdown from the Independent Investigations Group examined nursing standards in California, where the California Board of Registered Nursing can award registered nurses taking classes in therapeutic touch with continuing education units required for licensure renewal. In 2006 Hammer and Underdown presented the Board with the scientific evidence refuting the validity of therapeutic touch as a legitimate treatment, but the Board did not change its policy.