Weze Et Al. Respond

We are grateful for Edzard Ernst’s interest in our recent brief paper on healing by gentle touch and for opportunity to respond to his criticisms. He is correct to advocate caution in the interpretation of outcomes of “open” trials and to argue for scientific rigor in clinical trials, and we were circumspect in the interpretation of our findings. First, he asserts that our study was of spiritual healing, but that is not how we described it. Space did not allow for a fuller description of healing by gentle touch, but it differs substantially from that found ineffective by Abbott et al.1 It involves noninvasive touch on the head, chest, arms, legs, and feet, with varying extents of health-related conversation, for approximately 40 minutes—usually while the subject lies comfortably on a treatment bed—followed by a 10-minute rest. Although a simple, repeating pattern of touch is followed by the therapist at each session, successful treatment depends not on physical routine but on the therapist’s sensitive response to the altering circumstances of the subject; concentration, as in meditation or contemplative prayer; and the therapist’s ability to listen sympathetically to both the voice and the body of the subject. This healing treatment is more truly defined by relationship than by technique.2 Second, Ernst claims that a placebo response alone could fully explain our results, but the extent of benefit to virtually all participants greatly exceeds the rate of placebo response (around 35%) generally associated with physical illness.3 We believe that this, together with other considerations discussed, does provide strong circumstantial evidence of benefit. Third, Ernst states that the patients may have completed the questionnaires overoptimistically to please the team of investigators and researchers. This seems unlikely. Why would patients record improvements on some of the scales but not others if their intent were other than to inform the research? Regarding rigor in clinical trials, it is normal for open studies to precede randomized controlled trials because it would be foolhardy to implement the latter without preliminary evidence of the effectiveness, safety, and suitable dose of the treatment being evaluated. We believe that through various open studies2,4,5 we now have the necessary evidence to justify a randomized controlled study. The so-called soft endpoints of sufferers’ own perceptions of parameters of their health are exactly what this research needs. Substitution of apparently “hard” surrogate markers is a more likely source of obfuscation

Alternative medicine · Contemplation · Conversation · Epistemology · Interpretation (philosophy) · Meditation · Prayer · Psychoanalysis · Psychotherapist · Session (web analytics) · Subject (documents) · Therapeutic touch · Communication · Complementary and Alternative Medicine Studies · Computer Science · Medicine · Pain Management and Placebo Effect · Philosophy · Psychology · Psychotherapy Techniques and Applications

• Evaluation of Healing by Gentle Touch for the Treatment of Musculoskeletal Disorders

  Clare Weze, Helen L Leathard et al.•American Journal of Public Health•2004

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• Low Breastfeeding Rates and Public Health in the United States

  Jacqueline H Wolf•American Journal of Public Health•2003

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