![[Wizard holding up a candle]](../../images/wizard.gif)
Where do you go to get information on some new alternative health scheme? The library is a possibility and yet on a topic as well developed as Therapeutic Touch, there are only a handful of titles listed under the name itself. Many of the key texts sold at Touch workshops and recommended as central to understanding the field would be impossible to find without a bibliography. For example the introductory Healing Touch: Workbook (Level 1) credits the section on Energy Centers to Alice Bailey's book Esoteric Healing and the section on Energy Fields to Barbara Brennan's book Hands of Light. Neither book mentions Therapeutic Touch, Ms. Bailey because she died well before 1972, and Ms. Brennan because she is a competitor of TT in the healer training business. Next Fall I will publish an annotated bibliography so that you will be able to explore in depth the TT literature.
There are some places that you could plan to consult in the meantime. The National Council Against Health Fraud (NCAHF) is an all volunteer, non-profit, tax-exempt organization which does a heroic job of providing information on all levels of quackery and wishful thinking. For $20 you can support the organization and receive the bi-monthly NCAHF newsletter, which will make you one of the best informed opponents of misuse of health funds in the country. The NCAHF has produced almost a hundred, short, referenced, information sheets on all active, questionable health practices. They sell these for 50 cents or so and I distributed their comments on TT at my talk. I would also recommend that you acquire the sheets on Energy Medicine, Ayurvedic Medicine, and Magnetic Wellness while you are at it. For information on joining the NCAHF, write P.O. Box 1276, Loma Linda, CA 92354.
The work of the Rocky Mountain Skeptic organization under Bela Scheiber in questioning the right of the Colorado Nursing Board to offer continuing education credits for TT courses and the right of the University of Colorado's Health Science Center to offer course work in TT is well documented in three publications available from RMS for a mere $5.00. To order the complete 3 volume historical text of the three year RMS exposé of the Pseudoscience of Therapeutic Touch send your check to Rocky Mountain Skeptics, attn: TT, PO Box 7277, Boulder, CO 80306. For another $15.00, you can join the RMS and receive their excellent bi-monthly newsletter! Now that you have enough to read, have a great summer.
Copyright 1992-2005, The Association for Rational Thought