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ReligionNewsBlog.com • Item 186 • Posted: Saturday August 3, 2002  

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Patients and doctors in mainstream hospitals are coming to rely on therapeutic touch.
St. Petersburg Times, July 29, 2002
http://www.sptimes.com/2002/07/29/TampaBay/Healing_with_touch.shtml

By DONG-PHUONG NGUYEN, Times Staff Writer
© St. Petersburg Times
published July 29, 2002

T[A -- Eileen Weber's hands scan the air above the hospital patient's body, gently, rhythmically, like a metal detector over soft sand.

Weber is practicing a controversial form of faith therapy called therapeutic touch, which claims to temporarily rid the body of pain and discomfort through the shifting of energy.

While therapeutic touch has its critics, it is now taught in many nursing programs and offered at more than 70 hospitals nationwide, including Tampa General and South Florida Baptist in Plant City.

Weber, who works part-time as a chaplain at Tampa General, has served about 400 people since bringing therapeutic touch to the hospital more than 11/2 years ago. She received therapeutic touch training in a nursing program at Bayfront Medical Center in St. Petersburg, but Tampa General is the only hospital in the area that has allowed her to work on patients, Weber said.

Therapeutic touch is based on the concept that all matter is energy, and ailments throw the energy out of balance. It is the touch therapist's task to shift the energy back into balance and offer short-term relief -- all with swift motions of hands during 20-minute sessions.

Weber is often requested by patients and gets referrals from doctors. She has worked on comatose people, infants, burn patients, expectant mothers. Some patients say that their pains ease after a session.
[...]

One of therapeutic touch’s critics is Stephen Barrett, a retired Pennsylvania psychiatrist who publishes papers on quackery. He says there is no scientific evidence that the therapy works.

“The whole idea is based on delusion,” he said. “It makes as much sense as saying we’re having Ghostbusters come to the patient’s bedside and we’re going to get rid of the ghosts.”

Barrett questions the judgment of administrators who permit therapeutic touch in their hospitals.
“If it is represented as healing activity, that is fraud,” he said.

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