Last October in Old Salem, North Carolina, one hundred scientists, physicians, psychologists, theologians, and holistic practitioners traveled from universities and institutions throughout the United States and Europe to focus on what is potentially one of the most paradigm-breaking topics of our day: evidence regarding the possible influence of the mind on matter and on living systems—in the absence of sensory contact.

For three days, at the "Science and Spirituality of Healing" conference, they reviewed current research, considered methodological questions, and helped envision a future for this emerging field. Participants heard twenty invited summary papers prepared specifically for the meeting, addressing issues in the field of distant healing and subtle energies research—a fascinating survey of the substantial work linking mental and spiritual influence to healing effects occurring at a distance. Such effects have been attributed variously to intention, spiritual or religious belief, subtle energy, compassion, or intellectual functioning. Whatever name we give it, the effect is an anomaly according to the rules of conventional science.

FOCUS ON HEALING

"Distant healing," the primary focus of the Old Salem meeting, as defined in the Western Journal of Medicine, is "a compassionate mental act intended to improve the health and well-being of another person at a distance." It includes prayer and "psychic healing" and is independent of the effects of the patient's hope, expectation, imagery, relaxation, or experience of interpersonal support.

Presentations also addressed "subtle-energy" practices such as qi gong and Therapeutic Touch. Subtle-energy practices typically involve physical proximity and/or near-body attention between the source of healing energy and its recipient. These practices share the assumption that a presently unidentified form of energy is generated and transmitted during healing.

ASSESSING THE EVIDENCE

Four speakers representing unique perspectives addressed the quality of evidence for distant healing:

1. DIRECT MENTAL INTERACTIONS IN LIVING SYSTEMS (DMILS)
(Stefan Schmidt, Institut für Umweltmedizin und Krankenhaushygiene, Freiburg, Germany)

Schmidt is currently conducting an IONS-sponsored meta-analysis of research literature on DMILS over the past twenty-five years. This research, initiated within the field of parapsychology in the mid-Seventies, investigates the interaction between the intentions of one person and the physiological reactions of another spatially-separated person. Physiological reaction is recorded by measures such as electrodermal activity (EDA), respiration, and heart rate. This type of research design parallels the distant-healing interaction: A sender or healer tries to change the physical or physiological state of a healee or receiver from a distance. Schmidt concluded that the strength of the DMILS database calls for extending this research to include additional measures, variables, and models.

2. CLINICAL SETTINGS
(John Astin, University of Maryland School of Medicine, Baltimore, Maryland)

Can distant healing actually produce positive health benefits? Astin provided the most current and authoritative information available on this question. Expanding on his recently published article in The Annals of Internal Medicine, he observed that despite inconsistent results and methodological limitations in a number of studies, there is currently "moderate" scientific evidence supporting the efficacy of various distant-healing/intercessory prayer approaches in medicine. Again, more research was called for in the form of additional well-designed, large-scale randomized trials to confirm or refute these preliminary findings.

3. HEALING TOUCH
(Sara Warber, Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine, Ann Arbor, Michigan)

4. QI GONG
(Juliann Kiang, The Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, Bethesda, Maryland)

Kiang conducted a similar review in the field of qi gong describing the reliability, clinical relevance, and therapeutic potential of external qi gong. Much of the literature in this field is drawn from an extensive database of abstracts from international conferences, and also includes articles published in peer-reviewed journals. More than 130 of the 1,600 papers in the collection contain observations of biological effects, including the initiation, progression, and survival of malignancies in animal systems, shifts in immune parameters, enhanced healing of bone fractures, and analgesic effects. Studies of the effect of qi gong on non-living substances and subcellular constituents show shifts in physical measures, such as the absorption of specific wavelengths of light, profiles on gas chromatograms, and the half-life of isotopes.

It is difficult to evaluate qi gong literature within the Western scientific model because of the many variables involved, and international research abstracts provide little detail on methodology and design. Still, the experimental literature reflects a promising beginning, and studies of various positive effects associated with qi gong provide substantial impetus for deepening the study of this modality.

THE RANGE OF TARGET SYSTEMS

INFLUENCE OF MIND ON MACHINE
(Dean Radin, Interval Systems, Palo Alto, California; and Roger Nelson, Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research Laboratory [PEAR], Princeton, New Jersey)

Radin and Nelson presented a meta-analysis on one form of "Mind-Matter Interaction" (MMI). In this experimental system, a subject attempts to influence a statistically random event—equivalent to influencing a flip of the coin, thus altering the 50:50 ratio expected through chance. Despite the fact that the overall effect size for this type of MMI experiment is very small, an extremely large base of information has accrued over forty years of experimentation, and statistical outcomes are more than sixteen standard errors from chance (a highly significant finding).

They also reported on another intriguing form of this type of experiment, which asks whether a group of people whose attention or emotion is strongly focused on an engaging common interest can create a "group consciousness," resulting in departures from chance expectation. This experimental system relies on the "FieldREG" technology which was used, for example, during the worldwide attention focused on the funeral service for Princess Diana, and the announcement of the O.J. Simpson verdict. Preliminary results showed departures from chance, and a worldwide study—co-sponsored by IONS' Research Program—is now underway to explore this effect more deeply. Such results help link laboratory MMI research to studies of real-world applications, which in turn support the plausibility of distant healing (Published in IONS Review #49).

MIND AND CELL CULTURE
(Garret Yount, California Pacific Medical Center, San Francisco, California)

A serious problem encountered by researchers in distant healing is the difficulty of separating the effects of distant intention for healing from a patient's expectation or belief in its efficacy. In clinical studies, subjects are aware of the possibility they will be prayed for or receive healing intention, and this may create a positive outcome through the placebo effect. One way to avoid this problem is to use in vitro systems consisting of cultured cells (or their constituents) grown in laboratory dishes. The absence of a belief system in such studies helps counter the argument that distant-healing is due to placebo effects.

In collaboration with IONS, Yount has developed an exciting new approach to this problem, uniting molecular biology and distant healing in his attempt to establish a reliable in-vitro model that can be easily replicated by independent laboratories for evaluating the efficacy of distant-healing modalities. Working closely with qi gong practitioners in the United States and China, he has adapted standard experimental protocols from molecular oncology to ask whether healing treatments can accelerate brain tumor cell death and/or the growth of normal cells.

In a typical experiment, qi gong practitioners direct their energy toward plates of cultured cells sitting on a laboratory bench, while maintaining specific (or neutral) intentions regarding their fate. Statistical analysis of the results of thirty-three trials conducted in San Francisco and Beijing revealed a small but significant change in cell growth in qi gong trials when compared to appropriate controls. The results validate the in-vitro protocol as a reliable and replicable tool for the evaluation of distant-healing modalities, which will allow the wealth of technology available to biochemistry and molecular biology to be brought to bear on the question of how healing intentionality may influence biological targets.

MIND AND LIVING SYSTEMS
(Tim Harlow, College of Surgery, Devon, England)

The most complex target, of course, is the living organism. What, if any, are the effects of distant healing on human disease? Harlow, a physician, has developed a unique grassroots approach that provides a practical model for collecting data from a primary care practice. Harlow's practice included patients whose pain persisted and could not be helped by any form of conventional care, a situation extremely disheartening to patient and physician alike. Drawing on the widespread network of nonmedical healing practitioners in the UK (perhaps the largest in the world), Harlow and his colleagues created an integrated healing format in which the healing practitioner and the physician cooperated for the benefit of the patients. An initial observational study showed that the healers were very popular with such patients, and that the chronic pain they had experienced was eased (as assessed independently by both physician and healer).

In a second trial, this time randomized and controlled through a wait-list design, Harlow again tracked improvements in patients' physical symptoms, but also assessed improvement on other variables such as depression and the number of office visits. The results of this research—the first from primary care to look at healing in a controlled way—suggest that the health symptoms of chronically ill people can be helped by healing practitioners, and that additional parameters (anxiety, depression, general functioning) improved as well. A question remaining at the close of this trial is whether physicians can learn either to be healers (as the term is used here)—or at least learn to employ nonspecific healing effects (such as the placebo effect) to help their clients feel better.

ONGOING ISSUES IN DISTANT HEALING RESEARCH

Despite significant progress, many questions remain. For example, what is the subjective experience of the healer who performs distant healing? Allan Cooperstein, a clinical and forensic psychologist, reported there has been relatively little progress in this area beyond that described in his doctoral thesis twelve years ago, and studies that might reduce this deficit remain unpublished. Research on anomalous healing has remained focused on the measurement of effects on a variety of materials and organisms, while the healer—the apparent source of the anomaliesremains mysterious.

Another important question is whether "religious" and "spiritual" healing, the most common forms of distant healing, are one and the same or represent different variables. Linda George of Duke University, Durham, North Carolina, reported that according to a set of definitions recently developed by a panel at the National Institute of Healthcare Research, they are not the same, despite substantial overlap. This is an important distinction, since the existing literature (which focuses on religiosity and seldom mentions spirituality) shows strong and consistent associations with reduced onset of physical and mental illnesses, as well as reduced mortality, and increased likelihood of recovery from, or adjustment to, physical and mental illness. The mechanisms supporting this effect are unknown, but may involve an association between religion and healthy behaviors (such as dietary modifications), social support (in attending religious services), or a more coherent sense of meaning among religious practitioners.

A final question concerns the causes underlying distant healing observations. Does distant healing really represent "influence" at a distance, or are other interpretations equally valid? Physicist Edwin May has suggested two quite different mechanisms underlying the statistical anomalies seen in distant-healing experiments. One explanation is that the healer actually "causes" physiological changes in patients (force-based, or influence model). A second possibility, however, is an information-based model that would mimic healing but involves an anomalous sorting rather than actual influence. "Decision Augmentation Theory" (DAT), as this model is called, arose from psi studies showing that human intention can affect truly random number generators (as in the PEAR work described earlier). If psi can operate to affect physical systems, what precludes its operation within a distant-healing experiment? May's preliminary mathematical analysis shows how each model applies to one of two selected studies.

FUTURE DIRECTIONS

In a final brainstorming session, three key factors were identified as relevant to future progress:

• Developing a conceptual framework: This involves defining the purpose of healing and the nature of prayer, energy, and healing; identifying tools and outcome measures; and understanding how to match them to the subject being researched. It requires identifying the audience toward whom the research is addressed, since this may potentially affect the conceptual framework, the nature of the evidence required, and ultimately, acceptance and integration of results. Methodological development is ideally based on broad participation (including healers, MDs, researchers, and lay participants) because each perspective contributes to the whole.
  
  
• Empowerment of both the field and its practitioners: As the field of distant-healing research comes of age, it will increasingly interact with mainstream institutions whose proponents may feel challenged by its findings. David Hufford, Professor of Medical Humanities, Pennsylvania State College of Medicine, observed that the most fundamental barrier separating these practices from mainstream science lies quite simply in their nature, which appears anomalous with respect to conventional paradigms that take sensory data as basic. The forces involved in distant healing do not easily register on mechanical instruments, and this lack of objective data creates a strong barrier to scientific acceptance, since the perceived threat is to science in general, rather than to the specific fields of medicine, biology, or chemistry.
  
  This threat is magnified in that distant-healing practices are often associated with religions or unconventional traditions. Participants felt that one of the most significant outcomes of the Old Salem meeting lies in creating a visible research community devoted to distant-healing research, where ideas can be shared, methodologies refined, differences in approach honored and acknowledged, and the relationship with the medical and scientific community at large discussed.
  
  
• Communication: Despite these challenges, developing relationships with other researchers and communities is a strong priority for the distant-healing community. "Bridge-building" requires consistent attention to language and other cultural perspectives, awareness of experience derived from other disciplines, and at least an approximation of consensus within the distant healing field. Timing is also relevant: While the media may be fascinated by what is being learned, premature and confusing communications do not serve to advance the field. Development of internal networks—with future meetings, workshops, and communications about research studies being planned—is also high on the agenda of the distant-healing community.

IONS looks forward to continuing its leadership in these areas over the next decade. A comprehensive Summary Report is now being prepared highlighting each talk in a format oriented toward a lay readership (estimated availability date: July, 2001). For further information, see www.noetic.org. Formal proceedings will also be prepared, with full copies of the invited scientific papers, along with commentary and discussion highlights. This published volume is expected to be available by 2002.

The meeting at Old Salem was co-convened by Wayne Jonas, MD (Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences); Bryant Kendrick, PhD (Wake Forest School of Divinity); Mitchell Krucoff, MD (Duke Clinical Research Institute), and the co-author of this piece, Marilyn Schlitz.

The meeting was co-sponsored by the generosity and vision of the Laurance S. Rockefeller and Family Fund; Duke Clinical Research Institute; Duke Divinity School; Duke University Medical Center; The Samueli Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine of the University of California, Irvine; the University of California, San Diego; Wake Forest University; Wake Forest Divinity School; Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center; Wake Forest University School of Medicine; the New Creek Foundation; and the Institute of Noetic Sciences.

Frontiers Profile

Building Bridges Between the Rational and the Intuitive:
Profile of Wayne Jonas, MD

Wayne Jonas, MD speaks with an easy, confident style. His feet are firmly planted on the ground while his words lift the spirit of the audience as he offers his view on the changing face of American medicine. He is addressing a group of scientists at the recent “Science and Spirituality” conference, which he co-convened. His eyes twinkle as the questions begin: It is clear that he enjoys his work. “What brings you to this field?” someone near the front asks him. “I’m here to bridge worlds,” he replies quickly. “The creative and the intellectual are really one and the same. We talk about the insights from the spiritual traditions and the rational prowess of science as though they were diametrically opposed, but they’re not divided. Every person has them, every person uses them. And it’s important to nurture both aspects of ourselves.” The audience nods, recognizing a true bridge-making artisan in their midst. They respectfully acknowledge his many accomplishments that help to link the worlds of the intuitive and the rational.

Jonas, who is both a physician and an alternative practitioner, serves on IONS’ Scientific Advisory Committee where he helps guide the consciousness research program. In addition, he has many significant jobs that take him across the country and around the world. He is a member of the newly appointed White House Commission on Complementary and Alternative Medicine. Here he combines his scientific acumen with a finely tuned political savvy. When he is not attending White House Town Hall Meetings or speaking to international groups of scientists or health professionals, he is Associate Professor in the Department of Family Medicine at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in Bethesda, Maryland. He works one-on-one with post doctoral students seeking research training. Through his work as teacher, he has begun to formulate a curriculum for what the future of medicine could look like—including both health professionals and consumers in a health care system that is inclusive of all aspects of body, mind, and spirit.

Perhaps Jonas is best known for his previous role as Director of the Office of Alternative Medicine at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) from 1995 to 1998. Here he managed a $50 million annual research budget in complementary and alternative medicine (CAM), helping set the national agenda for medicine in the twenty-first century. He also helped move CAM from the position of an office within the NIH to that of an independent center with a growing budget and an increasingly sophisticated research portfolio. Under his guidance, NIH created thirteen major research centers around the country and supported more than fifty other research projects, including four multi-center clinical trials.

Jonas came to the NIH from his position as Director of the Medical Research Fellowship at Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, where he taught research methods and conducted laboratory research in immunology and toxicology. A Lieutenant Colonel in the US Army, Jonas was formerly Commander and Clinical Director of the 130th General Hospital in Dexheim, Germany. He received his medical degree from Bowman Gray School of Medicine, and did his residency training at the DeWitt Army Community Hospital. In addition to being a board-certified family practitioner and a Fellow of the American Academy of Family Physicians, he is trained in homeopathy, bioenergy therapy, diet and nutritional therapy, mind/body methods, spiritual healing, electro-acupuncture, and clinical pastoral education.

How did a Lieutenant Colonel and conventionally- trained physician come to be a leader in the efforts to reform and expand US medicine? Jonas was born in Twin Falls, Idaho, in 1955, the son of a Presbyterian minister who worked as a hospital chaplain. The senior Jonas actively sought to integrate “Clinical Pastoral Education” into the military in order to help hospitalized service personnel. As a military family, the Jonas’ lived in various countries, exposing the young man to many cultures and ways of being in the world. It is to his father that Jonas looks when asked how he became a bridge-builder between the spiritual and the scientific. It is to his wife and three children that he looks when asked how he stays balanced amidst his exhausting travel and lecture schedule.

Today Jonas is moving in some remarkable new directions. His ambition is to identify the underlying mechanisms that explain the efficacy of complementary and alternative medicines. His goal is to build a research program that develops basic science and clinical research simultaneously. Jonas intends to make use of modern scientific technology to address the mechanisms of action in a wide range of healing modalities. For example, the healer/scientist envisions the development of protocols using gene-array procedures to examine possible genetic expression arising from CAM signals in distant healing. He hopes to discover whether stable-water complexes exist in homeopathic and informational preparations, identified as informational signals that alter cell viability, ion flux, stress protein production, apoptosis and genetic expression in cell lines. Brain-imaging techniques drawn from the neurosciences may be used to help identify possible neural correlates of mind/body and consciousness-related healing modalities in both healthy and sensitive subjects.

For Jonas, a useful model for understanding the efficacy of modalities such as homeopathy, distant healing, or subtle energies may lie in the area of communications theory and information biology. “The world can be seen as a giant communication process,” he suggests. “In the case of medicine, the current view of the body is grounded in molecular biology.” This he equates with the Pony Express system of mail delivery. “Rather than taking the body as some kind of relay system (passing a healing signal from one carrier to the next in some linear process), the body also functions with something analogous to broadband Internet capabilities that allow bodily parts to communicate over long distances almost instantaneously. And one must also consider the possibility of nonlocal characteristics in the biological process, with widely separated parts interacting in ways that don’t have obvious physical carriers. Much of what we are talking about has to do with consciousness: being aware of what you do and what you expect to happen.”

Where will all this lead? For Jonas, there are many potential applications from this information-systems approach to biology. It may be possible to develop “biosensors” in which biological systems are used to detect subtle environmental signals that have previously been undiscovered in conventional medicine. It may even be possible to develop methods for creating “accelerated healing spaces” and products that enhance recovery from specific illnesses. Jonas imagines the discovery of a kind of digital “pharmacology” that may evolve, in which specific treatments are produced and delivered by computer. He also notes that electromagnetic treatments may be developed to improve resistance to degenerative brain diseases and to reduce fatal heart attacks, while scientists discover the underlying mechanism of action in homeopathy and ultralow-dose effects.

In all of this emphasis on rigorous science, Jonas recognizes the need for cultural sensitivity in bringing various perspectives together—“building bridges” between differing worldviews and models of reality that are represented in the CAM field. His program of research involves a comprehensive mapping of the interface between consciousness and the physical world. For this futurist, the science and society of tomorrow must develop in a more purposeful manner to gain a better, more inclusive form of truth-seeking. In this process, we see that science is not just a matter of discovery, but that we as conscious agents are co-creators of reality. “If people expect that a certain outcome will occur, it will occur more often for a variety of reasons. One reason is that they’re looking for the effect to occur, so they’ll notice it more often. The closer you look for something, the more often you’ll find it. In this way, our values come to the forefront of the scientific process. What kind of world do we want to discover?” Jonas asks. “It’s really up to us."

Marilyn Schlitz, PhD, is IONS director of research and senior scientist at the Complementary Medicine Research Institute at the California Pacific Medical Center. She has published numerous articles on consciousness studies. Nola Lewis was the IONS associate director of research, and contributed as an editor to many IONS' books and other media projects.

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