Brain Function in Recipients: A Func-tional Magnetic Resonance Imaging Anal-ysis (
J Altern Complement Med.
2005;11:965-971)—put the question of distanthealing to a rigorous test. Jeanne Achter-berg, PhD, and a team at North HawaiiCommunity Hospital on the big island of Hawaii set out to prove—or disprove—thatmeasurable biological changes occur when a healer engages with a patient, eventhough there is no physical contact.To test the hypothesis, they recruitedeleven healers who were recognized as be-ing skilled by the communities theyserved. Their practices included, amongothers, Healing Touch, Hawaiian
pule
, Pe-ruvian shamanism, Reiki, sound healing,and Qigoing. Each healer then chose a re-cipient for the DI experiment with whomhe or she felt some connection. Duringthe course of the study, each DI recipientspent 34 minutes in a functional magneticresonance machine while the assignedhealer, in an electromagnetic shield room,practiced his or her art in random two-minute “send” or “no-send” intervals, asassigned by the researchers.Significant differences in the brain scansof each of the recipients were found in the“send”and“no-send”periods.Areasofhighactivation during the “send” sessions werethe anterior and middle cingulate cortex,precuneus, and frontal superior regions.Most notable is that these same areas wereactivated in all the recipients, regardless of which healing modality was used.The authors concluded that, “Thesefindings support previous research on dis-tant healing, suggesting that human inter-actions may directly affect others in waysthat are not entirely understood.”
The Elephant in the Living Room
“These studies are buttressed by scores of prior experiments pointing to correlationsbetweenintentionsandmeasurablechangesin the physical world,” says Larry Dossey,MD, Executive Editor of
EXPLORE
. “Thestudies fall into two broad categories: (1) lo-cal effects occurring within an individual, asin the Davidson et al study above, and (2)distant or nonlocal effects occurring be-tween individuals or objects, as in the Ra-din et al and Achterberg et al studiesabove. The distant or nonlocal effects of thought and intention offer profoundchallenges to the conventional notionthat mental phenomena are confined tothe individual brain and body. Yet the ev-idence favoring an expanded, nonlocalview of consciousness is abundant.”Perhaps the most complete review of this evidence is that of Wayne Jonas, MD,former director of the National Institutesof Health’s National Center for Comple-mentary and Alternative Medicine, andhis associate Cindy C. Crawford (JonasWB, Crawford CC.
Healing, Intention and EnergyMedicine.
NewYork,NY:ChurchillLivingstone; 2003: xv-xix). “Healing prac-tices using intention, prayer, mental focusand laying-on-of-hands have been usedsince the dawn of mankind. The tools of science have been applied to medicineandhealingforthelast200yearsbutrarelyto the evaluation of intentional healingpractices.Thisbookistheresultofathree-year effort to systematically and criticallysummarize existing research on inten-tional healing practices and related re-search in order to determine its evidence-base and to establish standards for itsscientific evaluation,” says Jonas. Jonas and Crawford found over 2,200published reports, including books, arti-cles,dissertations,abstractsandotherwrit-ings on spiritual healing, energy medicine,and mental intention effects. This in-cluded122laboratorystudies;80random-ized controlled trials; 128 summaries or reviews; 95 reports of observational stud-iesandnonrandomizedtrials;271descrip-tivestudies;casereportsandsurveys;1286other writings including opinions, claims,anecdotes, letters to editors, commentar-ies, critiques and meeting reports; and 259selected books. How good are these labo-ratory experiments and randomized con-trolled studies of the nonlocal effects of thought and intention? Jonas and Craw-ford graded the quality of studies by ap-plying strict CONSORT (ConsolidatedStandards of Reporting Trials) criteria.They gave the highest grade, an “A,” tomind-matter interaction studies, such asthe Radin et al study above. They gave a“B” to healing studies in general, such asthe above experiment of Achterberg et al.“The field of intentional healing re-search is in its infancy,” explains Jonas,“but the evidence and implications of these practices so far warrant a concertedscientific effort.”“The often-heard comments of skep-tics—that very few intentionality studiesexist, that they are hopelessly flawed, andthat they cannot be replicated—are false.Ignoring data does not make it go away,”adds Dossey. “We appear to be nearingthe day when the elephant in the livingroom of science—the local and nonlocaleffects of consciousness—will at long lastbe acknowledged.”
Exposure to PolychlorinatedBiphenyls May Reduce theEffectiveness of Vaccines inChildren
Why do some children, when vaccinated,producelesseramountsofantibodiesthanother children? A growing body of re-search suggests that part of the answer might lie in the degree to which the childhas been exposed to environmental toxi-cants.Most recently, according to a studypublished in the August 22, 2006, onlineedition of
PLoS Medicine
, increased peri-natal exposure to PCBs can adversely im-pact on immune responses to childhoodvaccinations. Researchers came to thisconclusion when the data revealed thatsome of the children in the study whowere exposed to polychlorinated biphe-nyls (PCBs) during the last months of pregnancy or shortly after birth did notproduce the necessary quantities of anti-bodies to make the tetanus and diphtheriavaccines 100% effective.The study—“Reduced Antibody Re-sponses to Vaccinations in Children Ex-posed to Polychlorinated Biphenyls”—looked at two groups of children in theFaeroe Islands, which are located in theNorth Atlantic. The traditional diet inthese islands includes whale blubber,some of which may be contaminated withPCBs. Blood and milk samples taken dur-ing pregnancy from the mothers were an-alyzed to determine the children’s prena-talPCBexposure.Afterroutinechildhoodvaccinations against tetanus and diphthe-ria, the two groups of children were exam-ined at age 18 months and 7 years, andblood samples were examined for tetanusand diphtheria antibodies.The findings showed an association be-tween increased PCB contamination andlowered antibody response to the vac-cines. At 18 months, the diphtheria anti-body concentration decreased by 24% for each doubling of the PCB exposure. At 7
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Matters of Note EXPLORE January/February 2007, Vol. 3, No. 1
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