don's report archive

by Donald B. Ardell, Ph. D.

Wellness in the Headlines
(Don's Report to the World)

A few years ago, I received a letter from someone upset that a celebrity had advised parents in poor countries to eat their young. The letter read, in part: "Jonathan Swift has suggested to the poor of a third world country that they raise children for the purposes of selling them as meat! This is outrageous, in my opinion. I think we should forbid it. He even included recipes! We should call this what it is -- cannibalism! Is this not enough to upset you - a wellness advocate?"

I pointed out that Jonathan Swift made that suggestion in a famous tongue-in-cheek work entitled, “A Modest Proposal”-- in 1729! I noted that it was satire, not a serious proposal. I also advised the letter writer that I suspected someone was pulling his chain, or “having him on,” as the Australians like to say. Swift, who was something of a one man “Saturday Night Live” show in his day, was being entertaining, not serious, though he did have a point of view cloaked in satire. Just the same, Swift was roundly condemned by segments of Irish society for suggesting such a thing, even in jest and a lot of readers simply failed to appreciate the intended humor. The cure for this sort of thing? As Swift might have suggested, lighten thou, up.

I think of Swift and “A Modest Proposal” every time I read about therapeutic touch! As the comic political commentator Dennis Miller is known to say, I could be wrong about this, but I think this form of therapy is the looniest idea to come down the medical pike in quite some time. If it were a new age fringe kind of thing, I’d hold my tongue (or lay off the keyboard, as the case might be), but therapeutic touch is practiced in places where you would think they would know or think better.

One important skill area in the mental domain of self-management is effective decision-making, which entails an awareness of and respect for a few basic principles of thinking critically. In other essays, I have addressed this skill area, offering many criteria and standards for effective decisions. I have also recommended an attitude of “bemused skepticism” whenever you are suspicious of or not quite confident about a drug, therapy or other medical intervention.

Therapeutic touch entails a belief in energy fields around the human body that a skilled nurse or other practitioner can manipulate in order to facilitate healing. It strikes me that such a notion could only appeal to someone who is both gullible and easily fooled. I may be missing something but it seems that such a method is right out of the Middle Ages, a rain forest or New Orleans. It has no place in modern medicine, in my opinion, but that’s only my opinion, something to which we are all entitled.

Amazingly, however, nurses in at least 80 North American hospitals, including the Vancouver Hospital and Health Science Center where I have worked on several occasions, use it! Over 50,000 medical professionals, mostly nurses, are trained in this practice and presumably engage in imaginative rituals on compliant patients, some of whom might need real therapy!

On the other hand, if someone believes the manipulation of energy fields will cure whatever ails him, and the trouble is not a missing limb or something beyond the power of suggestion, there is a good chance it will. A recent series of DR’s on the placebo effect should have made that clear. The evidence of the power of the placebo in all manner of forms is overwhelming, and a cure is a cure, however obtained.

There must be something to it that I can’t fathom, for therapeutic touch is said to be taught in over 100 colleges and universities in 75 countries.

Recently, The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) published a report from a task force on “Questionable Nurse Practices” quite critical of the practice. It described a study in which 21 therapeutic touch practitioners failed to detect any alleged "field" under controlled study conditions. They did not even do as well as study subjects would have been expected to do if they simply guessed, based on probability. The study recommendation was that claims for efficacy of therapeutic touch are groundless and that further professional use is unjustified. The lead investigator put it less politely, suggesting that the evidence suggests that the foundation of therapeutic touch is baseless.” Indeed.

Alternatives to Swift’s “eat your young” advice or the idea of therapeutic touch is to take good care of yourself, be as jolly as possible, keep an open but critical mind and live a wellness lifestyle in the manner you find most sensible, efficacious and enjoyable - while looking on the bright side, of course. All the best.

(Note: This essay will be filed in the archives in the MENTAL DOMAIN under the skill area of effective decisions. Additional articles related to this theme may be found there.)

(Ed. Note: Views expressed in this and other columns are those of the author and not necessarily those of the SeekWellness Editorial Board.)

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