End the Ban on Psychoactive Drug Research - The Editors of Scientific American

Hell yeah!

It's long-past time that we rework the "schedule" of controlled substances. LSD, ecstasy (MDMA), psilocybin (mushrooms), peyote (cactus), and marijuana, all of which have a history of use in healing, are listed in Schedule I, drugs have “no currently accepted medical use.” More specifically:

Substances in this schedule have no currently accepted medical use in the United States, a lack of accepted safety for use under medical supervision, and a high potential for abuse.

Of the drugs listed above, the only that has a potential for abuse is marijuana. If you take LSD, MDMA, psilocybin, or peyote two days in a row, the second day will be a sad disappointment. Hallucinogens have NO potential for addiction and DO have documented medical uses.

This is a real issue, not only for health and healing, but to limit these particular drugs (with no known toxicity in standard doses) is to legislate states of consciousness. Why are we allowing the government to dictate to us how we can experience this particular slice of reality?

End the Ban on Psychoactive Drug Research

It's time to let scientists study whether LSD, marijuana and ecstasy can ease psychiatric disorders

Feb 1, 2014 | By The Editors | Scientific American

 

Discovery of new psychiatric medication, whether for the treatment of depression, autism or schizophrenia, is at a virtual standstill. As just one example, the antidepressants on the market today are no more effective at reversing the mood disorder than those that first became available in the 1950s.

New thinking is desperately needed to aid the estimated 14 million American adults who suffer from severe mental illness. Innovation would likely accelerate if pharmacologists did not have to confront an antiquated legal framework that, in effect, declares off-limits a set of familiar compounds that could potentially serve as the chemical basis for entire new classes of drugs.

LSD, ecstasy (MDMA), psilocybin and marijuana have, for decades, been designated as drugs of abuse. But they had their origins in the medical pharmacopeia. Through the mid-1960s, more than 1,000 scientific publications chronicled the ways that LSD could be used as an aid to make psychotherapy more effective. Similarly, MDMA began to be used as a complement to talk therapy in the 1970s. Marijuana has logged thousands of years as a medicament for diseases and conditions ranging from malaria to rheumatism.

National laws and international conventions put a stop to all that. The Controlled Substances Act of 1970 declared that these drugs have “no currently accepted medical use” and classified them in the most stringently regulated category of controlled substances: Schedule I. The resulting restrictions create a de facto ban on their use in both laboratories and clinical trials, setting up a catch-22: these drugs are banned because they have no accepted medical use, but researchers cannot explore their therapeutic potential because they are banned. Three United Nations treaties extend similar restrictions to much of the rest of the world.

The decades-long research hiatus has taken its toll. Psychologists would like to know whether MDMA can help with intractable post-traumatic stress disorder, whether LSD or psilocybin can provide relief for cluster headaches or obsessive-compulsive disorder, and whether the particular docking receptors on brain cells that many psychedelics latch onto are critical sites for regulating conscious states that go awry in schizophrenia and depression.

In many states, doctors can now recommend medical marijuana, but researchers cannot study its effects. The uneasy status quo leaves unanswered the question of whether the drug might help treat attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, nausea, sleep apnea, multiple sclerosis and a host of other conditions.

A few privately funded studies of these compounds have yielded tantalizing hints that some of these ideas merit consideration. Yet doing this research through standard channels, as psychopharmacologist David J. Nutt of Imperial College London and his co-authors noted in a recent article in Nature Reviews Neuroscience, requires traversing a daunting bureaucratic labyrinth that can dissuade even the most committed investigator. (Scientific American is part of Nature Publishing Group.) It can take years to receive approval for a clinical trial from both regulators and hospital ethics committees, even while tallying thousands of dollars in licensing fees and tens of thousands to obtain drugs that are, of course, unavailable from a chemical supply catalogue.

The endless obstructions have resulted in an almost complete halt in research on Schedule I drugs. This is a shame. The U.S. government should move these drugs to the less strict Schedule II classification. Such a move would not lead to decriminalization of these potentially dangerous drugs—Schedule II also includes cocaine, opium and methamphetamine, after all—but it would make it much easier for clinical researchers to study their effects.

If some of the obstacles to research can be overcome, it may be possible to finally detach research on psychoactive chemicals from the hyperbolic rhetoric that is a legacy of the war on drugs. Only then will it be possible to judge whether LSD, ecstasy, marijuana and other highly regulated compounds—subjected to the gauntlet of clinical testing for safety and efficacy—can actually yield effective new treatments for devastating psychiatric illnesses.

This article was originally published with the title "End the Drug War's Research Bans."

Andrew Wakefield and the "MMR Vaccine Causes Autism" Deception

The New York Times Magazine has a long feature on the post-disgrace life of Andrew Wakefield, the titular head of the anti-vaccine crowd who has lost his license to practice medicine and been cast as an unethical scientist as a result of his fraudulent study. He was even forced to drop his libel suit against Channel 4 in England because, well, they told the truth (which meant he also had to pay their costs).

P2P Foundation founder Michel Bauwens shared the link on his Facebook page and it created an animated debate between two people who represent the opposing views in the autism debate.

One view, best represented by Jenny McCarthy, is the "science is all lies" and "we can't trust the medical establishment" perspective. She now claims to have cured Even (her son) of autism through diet, an approach saner people have been arguing for decades.

The other view is that "science is the only answer" and "medicine is the only way to discover answers" perspective, best represented by the scientific community who largely dismissed Wakefield's "proof" from day one.

I'm not sure why I weighed in on the discussion, but I did - and it seems to me this is simply one manifestation of how ignorance about science (in general) and the inability to use discernment (in particular) are causing all kinds of problems in our culture. I think this is as true for scientists sometimes as it is for the general populace.

Here is some of the article from the NYT magazine:

The Crash and Burn of an Autism Guru

By SUSAN DOMINUS

Published: April 20, 2011

As people streamed into Graceview Baptist Church in Tomball, Tex., early one Saturday morning in January, two armed guards stood prominently just inside the doorway of the sanctuary. Their eyes scanned the room and returned with some frequency to a man sitting near the aisle, whom they had been hired to protect.

The man, Andrew Wakefield, dressed in a blazer and jeans and peering through reading glasses, had a mild professorial air. He tapped at a laptop as the room filled with people who came to hear him speak; he looked both industrious and remote. Broad-shouldered and fair at 54, he still has the presence of the person he once was: a conventional winner, the captain of his medical school’s rugby team, the head boy at the private school he attended in England. Wakefield was a high-profile but controversial figure in gastroenterology research at the Royal Free Hospital in London when, in 1998, he upended his career path — and more significant, the best-laid plans of public-health officials — by announcing at a press conference that he had concerns about the safety of the measles-mumps-rubella vaccine (M.M.R.) and its relationship to the onset of autism.

Although Wakefield did not claim to have proved that the M.M.R. vaccine (typically given to children at 12 to 15 months) caused autism, his concerns, not his caveats, ricocheted around the world. His belief, based on a paper he wrote about 12 children, is that the three vaccines, given together, can alter a child’s immune system, allowing the measles virus in the vaccine to infiltrate the intestines; certain proteins, escaping from the intestines, could then reach and harm neurons in the brain. Few theories have drawn so much attention and, in turn, so much refutation: a 2003 paper in The Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine, which reviewed a dozen epidemiological studies, concluded that there was no evidence of an association between autism and M.M.R., and studies in peer-reviewed journals since have come to the same conclusion. In Britain, the General Medical Council revoked Wakefield’s medical license after a lengthy hearing, citing numerous ethical violations that tainted his work, like failing to disclose financing from lawyers who were mounting a case against vaccine manufacturers. The Lancet, which published the original Wakefield paper, retracted it. In a series that ran early this year, The British Medical Journal concluded that the research was not just unethically financed but also “fraudulent” (that timelines were misrepresented, for example, to suggest direct culpability of the vaccine).

Andrew Wakefield has become one of the most reviled doctors of his generation, blamed directly and indirectly, depending on the accuser, for irresponsibly starting a panic with tragic repercussions: vaccination rates so low that childhood diseases once all but eradicated here — whooping cough and measles, among them — have re-emerged, endangering young lives.

You can read the article for yourself - it's actually pretty fair.

The following is my comment from this FB discussion - I try to ground my views in the facts, as well as some science that is often not recognized as part of the debate. I have expanded my thoughts a bit here, since this is an easier format to write in than the FB comments box, and I have included links to relevant articles.

* * * *

The facts of the case speak for themselves:

• When Wakefield was arguing that the MMR vaccine caused autism, he was marketing his own measles vaccine on which he held a patent - he had a monetary interest in this "research" - he is as guilty of greed and avarice as are the Big Pharma companies.
• His "research" was funded in part by lawyers who were mounting a case against vaccine manufacturers and needed some "science" for their case (he was one of many doctors paid to support their case). Wakefield received £435,643 in fees, plus £3,910 expenses, dating to two years before his Lancet article.
• He hand picked the children in the study - only 12 of them (eight out of 12 children attending a routine clinic at the hospital had blamed MMR for their autism, and said that problems came on within days of the vaccine). He argued that their autism was caused by the vaccine. This is equivalent to me finding 8 kids with autism who happened to eat peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and arguing that eating a PB&J sandwich causes autism. There was no actual evidence.
• He changed the timeline on the histories of some of the children - several had been taken to physicians about developmental delays BEFORE they received the MMR vaccine. He said in his paer that all 12 children were normal before the vaccine, but five had documented pre-existing developmental concerns. Only one child had an onset of symptoms following the vaccine.
• His own lab was unable to replicate the study results linking MMR to the gut problems: "The results do not support previous data implicating persistent measles virus infection with the aetiology of IBD or autistic enteropathy."

I hate big pharma as much as the next person (and I totally distrusted their flu hysteria last year), but I really HATE greed masquerading as a science and seeing gullible people who do not understand science being sucked in by a weasel. Wakefield is a weasel who will never back down as long as he is making millions from the anti-vaccine crowd in the U.S.

People seem to lack discernment (as well as knowledge) around issues like these.

For example, it's entirely possible that some kids with autism do also have an intestinal disorder (we know the gut contains many of the same neurotransmitters as the brain - and that bacteria in the gut can influence brain function). It's entirely possible he was on to something with his gut hypothesis, but he went the wrong direction and has refused to change direction.

There has never been any evidence that the MMR vaccine is involved in gut disease. Even his own lab could not replicate the results linking the measles vaccine to "autistic enteropathy." At this point, most scientists feel the MMR vaccine is the only thing we can rule out as a cause of autism - Wakefield's original paper spurred tons of research, none of which confirmed or replicated his results.

It's also alarming that Wakefield's supporters fail to consider the incredible lack of ethical integrity he exhibited with that paper and his defense of it. It's one thing to generate research that is disproved - that happens to a lot of great scientists and it's why the scientific method relies on replication of results, so that an anomalous finding can be checked and rechecked.

However, it's a whole other thing to manipulate the research to provide the results you are looking for - and to have a financial interest in those results. Not to mention the use of unwarranted invasive procedures:

including colonoscopies, colon biopsies and lumbar punctures ("spinal taps") on his research subjects without the approval of his department's ethics board and contrary to the children's clinical interests (BBC News, 2007)

Two of the commentators on FB seem to me to be arguing form the extremes of each perspective, but science, while not the answer to everything, is more reliable than general distrust of science, especially when we are dealing with physiological systems - so Science Guy (SG), in my opinion, is on more solid ground, although I am more skeptical in general than he is

To me, Anti-Vaccine Girl (AVG) is offering the type of argument that wants "intelligent design" to be taught as an equal theory to evolution. She distrusts science and medicine so she attaches to anything that confirms her distrust. But the scientific method works incredibly well, even if she does not believe in it. As proof, she drives a car, uses electronic devices, does not have polio, and so on, including having food in cupboards that does not rot - all of which resulted from the scientific method

Where I see the current science heading is toward the kind of systems model SG advocates. For example, we are learning more about how nutrition impacts brain function (if your kid has ADHD, s/he should eat only whole natural foods, get plenty of omega-3 fats, and consume little to no sugar, including fruit sugar/juices, only whole fruit such as berries). We are also learning that the enteric nervous system (the gut) is highly integrated in brain function - all of this points to the mind = brain/body, not just the brain.

It saddens me to so little understanding of science in those who could most benefit from it (parents of autistic children) - and so little discernment when people become emotionally involved in a cause.

* * * *

There are a lot more perspectives to the autism issue than just these - we would also need to be looking at:

• Environmental toxins such as xenoestrogens
• Epigenetic influences from the mother and father before the pregnancy, and from the mom during pregnancy
• More research into nutritional status
• Some follow-up on the connection (if any) between the function of the enteric nervous system and autism
  
• Likely over-diagnosis of the disorder in recent years because parents pressure doctors into explaining why their kid is not gifted
  
• Lack of complete understanding of developmental processes and pacing even in healthy kids (some kids grow out of being autistic)
  
• The subjective experience of the autistic child might offer a huge insight
• What role does Big Pharma play in promoting autism as a disorder for which they hope to have a drug - lots of autistic kids are already drugged with antipsychotics to keep them docile
  

The list could go on for days - the point is that we need to take an integrative (or integral) approach to this very complex problem.

Tags: autism, fraud, medicine, alternative medicine, research, Psychology, Andrew Wakefield, MMR, Vaccine, Autism spectrum, Deception, New York Times, Magazine, autistic enteropathy, gut, intestinal disorders, measles vaccine, falsified data, The Crash and Burn of an Autism Guru, Susan Dominus, Jenny McCarthy

Ellen Hughes - What Science Tells Us About How to Thrive

UCtelevision - For many of us, today's world is out of balance, characterized by breaking news every minute, instant messaging, new technologies to be mastered and more channels of communication than ever before. Scientific advances from integrative medicine can help you bring the balance back and improve the quality of your day. Series: "UCSF Mini Medical School for the Public" [1/2011] [Health and Medicine] [Show ID: 20217]

Tags: Ellen Hughes, thriving, personal medicine, UCTelevision, integrative medicine, Health, culture, medicine, alternative medicine, Psychology, technology, What Science Can Tell Us About How to Thrive, thriving

Energy Psychology: Mental Health Experts Say It's Time to End the Ban

I'm skeptical of energy psychology, largely because there does not seem to be any real evidence that it works - or how it works (which is less of issue to me). In this "interview," Dr. David Gruder, a leader in trying to legitimize energy psychology, is questioned by the organization that he leads, the Energy Medicine Institute. So much for objectivity - but it is interesting to read their perspective.

The APA (American Psychological Association) has banned the technique as unproven and has rejected the most recent appeal from the Energy Medicine Institute. The best known variation is call the the Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT), an approach that I have seen many therapists embrace, despite the lack of empirical support.

Energy Psychology: Mental Health Experts Say It's Time to End the Ban

Wednesday 27 October 2010

by: Energy Medicine Institute, t r u t h o u t | Interview

Dr. David Gruder Ph.D., DCEP, a clinical and organizational psychologist and diplomate in comprehensive energy psychology, is a pioneer in applying insight and techniques from time-honored healing traditions for enhancing mental health. In 1999, he co-founded the Association for Comprehensive Energy Psychology and served as its first president until 2002. Dr. Gruder was recently appointed the mental health coordinator for the nonprofit Energy Medicine Institute. His most recent book about restoring personal, relationship and societal integrity, "The New IQ: How Integrity Intelligence Serves You, Your Relationships and Our World," has won six major awards, including the U.S. Book News Best Social Change book of 2008. His web site is here.

Energy Medicine Institute: You take the position that the ban on the teaching of energy psychology is irrational and unwarranted. Why?

Dr. David Gruder: PTSD [post-traumatic stress disorder] is a mental health epidemic that disrupts the lives of more than five million people in the United States, and we are producing new victims of this debilitating condition at an unthinkable rate in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Conventional therapies have not been particularly effective in helping these individuals. Less than one in ten veterans who seek care for PTSD from the Department of Veterans Affairs actually completes the treatment as recommended.(1) Now there is a therapy that appears, in a series of clinical studies, to be more effective than conventional treatments. The APA's [the American Psychological Association] mandate is, at its core, to be a force in improving the country's psychological health. The organization should be shouting from the rooftops about this new clinical development. Instead it has persisted for over a decade in putting up roadblocks to informing its 150,000 members about the approach.

EMI: What exactly is the technique being banned by the APA?

DG: Energy Psychology involves procedures such as tapping on acupuncture points at the same time that a traumatic memory or stressful trigger is brought to mind. The technique appears to send signals in the brain that counteract the stress response. It has been shown to be effective with a range of disorders, from simple phobias to irrational anger to severe PTSD.

A primary way that new innovations are introduced to the mental health profession is through continuing education. Each specialty requires continuing education for license renewal. By putting a ban on Energy Psychology as a continuing education topic available to psychologists, the APA is strongly discouraging psychologists from learning about it and is essentially branding it, to the mental health profession and the general public, as not being a legitimate approach.

EMI: Where did the ban come from?

DG: In fairness, the APA's job is to serve as a gatekeeper. New therapeutic techniques are continually being introduced, and it is the APA's proper role to tell the public which are valid, based on scientific findings. When psychologists started treating mental health conditions by tapping on acupuncture points, the technique seemed very strange. It had no research support. No plausible explanations of how it worked were available. So it is not surprising that the APA sent a memo announcing the ban to its Continuing Education sponsors. This was 1999. Since that time, however, a growing body of solid research and a tremendous amount of clinical experience has been showing that the approach is surprisingly effective. But the APA has not budged on its position and, in fact, seems to have dug in, as if the new evidence threatens established ways of treating mental illness. And, of course, it does.

EMI: Who is asking for the policy to be changed?

DG: The Association for Comprehensive Psychology (ACEP) is an 850-member professional organization comprised primarily of clinicians and researchers. ACEP has been actively trying to get the APA to lift the ban since it was announced more than a decade ago. Within the APA itself, some 75 of its members have started a petition to form a new APA division that is dedicated to the study, practice, and dissemination of the new approach.

EMI: What is the new evidence and what does it show?

DG: Increasing numbers of articles and reports documenting the effectiveness of carefully administered Energy Psychology techniques have been appearing.

This past April, the results from a "randomized controlled trial" - the gold standard in health care research - were presented at the prestigious Society of Behavioral Medicine Conference in Seattle. The data show that PTSD symptoms were dramatically reduced in 49 military veterans. Forty-two of them, an almost unheard of 86 percent, no longer scored within the PTSD range after six sessions. There was only one drop-out. The gains persisted at 6-month follow-up. Compare this with the 9 of 10 drop-out rate in VA programs.(2)

These treatment results, 86 percent no longer in the PTSD range after only six sessions, are also far stronger than the outcomes reported for conventional treatments such as Cognitive Behavior Therapy. In studies of conventional PTSD treatments, a 50 percent success rate with those who complete a twelve-session program is considered a highly favorable response.

EMI: What is the APA saying? What is their position on the treatments?

DG: This is the APA's fourth ruling in just the past two years denying ACEP's requests to provide psychologists continuing education credit for studying the approach. They've rejected two applications, a request for reconsideration, and most recently a formal appeal. The APA's reasoning is difficult to discern from the documents announcing the denials. Their responses fail to address the fact that the preponderance of emerging research evidence shows the approach to be effective. They instead emphasize that the approach is "controversial" while ignoring the published evidence except to take issue with a few fine points on research design. I've reviewed the proceedings, and by any objective evaluation, ACEP has met every one of the APA's published standards for CE credit approval many times over. The APA, meanwhile, has yet to provide a rational explanation of where the ACEP application falls short. But their ruling, of course, stands.

EMI: Why is it important and who could benefit?

DG: By 2006, more than 300,000 veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan were already suffering with PTSD and its symptoms, such as flashbacks, insomnia, nightmares, fractured relationships, and inability to concentrate or hold a job. In addition there are untold numbers of PTSD sufferers who have been victims of violent crimes, accidents, or emotional or sexual abuse. Energy Psychology may well be the most important non-drug therapy developed in recent years offering relief to people facing such challenges.

A number of recent studies, such as the Society of Behavioral Medicine report, show that Energy Psychology treatments produce stronger outcomes than those found for other PTSD treatments. In the past few years more than two dozen papers on Energy Psychology have appeared in peer-reviewed mental health journals, most of them showing highly favorable outcomes in systematic studies of the method.

At least three international disaster relief organizations have adopted Energy Psychology as a core modality in treating mental health challenges of disaster survivors.(3)

In short, we're long overdue for strongly encouraging mental health professionals to learn about how to use these techniques in their practices.

EMI: Are you saying there is a willful and intentional denial on the part of the APA professionals who are failing to approve the applications for CE approval?

DG: It appears that there are people within the hierarchy of APA who are defending an outmoded position by denying or not bothering to become informed about data that show these techniques to be unusually effective. Some of their resistance is easy to understand. Energy Psychology uses techniques adapted from Traditional Chinese Medicine. It is a different paradigm from anything in the training or background of most conventional psychologists. It also looks silly to be tapping on the skin while repeating phrases that bring up difficult memories. How could such voodoo help overcome psychological problems? To make matters worse, early claims by the field's proponents ran way ahead of the research support, which is only now coming in.

With the new findings, however, showing that these techniques not only work but that they are quicker and more effective than approved approaches, I believe that continuing the ban is inexcusable. The APA is officially refusing to face the fact that Energy Psychology is providing people with powerful help. I'm sure it is only a narrow group of conventionally-minded bureaucrats and committee members within the organization, but they are controlling what other professionals will read and study.

The policy is not only actively blocking psychologists from learning how to use the tools responsibly. The APA's positions on such matters reverberate throughout the mental health community, so ultimately they're hurting hundreds of thousands of people by interfering in the processes that would lead to them receiving the best treatments available. Beyond that, due to a growing demand for Energy Psychology methods, the APA's blockade is having the unintended effect of causing the public to seek assistance with complicated issues like PTSD from practitioners who are not sufficiently trained in treating serious disorders. It is driving the public away from psychologists and toward people who have learned how to tap on acupuncture points without also having the years of study required for a comprehensive clinical background.

EMI: Are there other supporters for energy psychology in the APA?

DG: Yes. Three highly favorable assessments of Energy Psychology have been published in the APA's own journals. A review of Energy Psychology Interactive, one of the main Energy Psychology texts, appeared in the APA's online book review journal PsychCRITIQUES. It concluded that because Energy Psychology successfully "integrates ancient Eastern practices with Western psychology [it constitutes] a valuable expansion of the traditional biopsychosocial model of psychology to include the dimension of energy." The review, by Dr. Ilene Serlin, a former APA division president, describes Energy Psychology as "a new discipline that has been receiving attention due to its speed and effectiveness with difficult cases." Next September, a fourth article that describes the brain mechanisms that are involved in successful Energy Psychology treatments will appear in the APA's prestigious Psychotherapy: Theory, Research, Practice, Training.

There is also growing acceptance in professional groups outside of the APA. ACEP itself is an approved continuing education provider for social workers, certified mental health counselors, drug & alcohol counselors, and nurses. Numerous health and mental health bodies have long recognized acupuncture, acupressure, and similar practices as valid treatments. The field of integrative medicine, one of the most important developments in health care, is also actively utilizing such methods.

EMI: So, energy psychology fits with techniques like acupuncture?

DG: Yes, absolutely. Energy Psychology combines well-established Western psychological methods - such as having the client mentally revisit a difficult experience or re-evaluate beliefs about a personal problem - with techniques derived from Traditional Chinese Medicine. The techniques involve rubbing or tapping specific acupuncture points - interventions that are accepted in Traditional Chinese Medicine alongside the use of needles. It isn't surprising that the combination is remarkably effective. In 2003, the World Health Organization identified some two dozen conditions where acupuncture is effective, including a number of psychological problems, and several dozen more where the evidence is promising. The American Academy of Medical Acupuncture has more than 1600 physicians and publishes one of several peer-reviewed acupuncture journals in the U.S. What is surprising is that the APA is having so much difficulty embracing techniques that combine standard psychotherapeutic elements with those derived from the well-respected healing traditions of Eastern cultures. Ironically, other Eastern methods such as mindfulness meditation are among the hottest topics in clinical psychology right now. I think acupoint tapping will be next.

EMI: What's the right outcome here? What should the APA do?

DG: Those within the APA who are maintaining the ban need to take their heads out of the sand and recognize the validity of the evidence before them. They are doing tangible harm by defending a policy that closes the door on one of the most promising clinical innovations of recent years. Tapping on acupuncture points is not only non-invasive; it appears to change the brain's chemistry in ways that bring about immediate clinical benefits. To best serve the public, therapists need to keep up with such cutting edge developments and get proper training in them. It is also in the APA's interests to change its position on Energy Psychology. Blocking a promising treatment for our returning veterans gives the appearance, again, that the APA is out of integrity with its commitment to uphold the highest professional standards for promoting the public's welfare.

The nonprofit Energy Medicine Institute has been advancing the responsible use of energy-based healing methods since 1999. Co-founded by Donna Eden, a leading energy medicine expert, and David Feinstein, a renowned licensed psychologist, the Institute provides public education and professional training worldwide. It disseminates knowledge and research information about energy medicine and shows health care professionals, businesses, and educators how to incorporate energy medicine perspectives and methods to improve health care, business, and education. EMI is based in Ashland, Oregon. Its website is: www.EnergyMedicineInstitute.org.

Footnotes:

1. Seal, K. H., Maguen, S., Cohen, B., Gima, K. S., Metzler, T. J., Ren, L., ... Marmar, C. R. (2010). VA mental health services utilization in Iraq and Afghanistan veterans in the first year of receiving new mental health diagnoses. Journal of Traumatic Stress, 23, 5- 16.
2. Church, D., Hawk, C., Brooks, A., Toukolehto, O., Wren, M., Dinter, I., & Stein, P. (2010, April). Psychological trauma in veterans using EFT (Emotional Freedom Techniques): A randomized controlled trial. Poster session at the 31st Annual Meeting and Scientific Sessions of the Society of Behavioral Medicine, Seattle, April 7-10, 2010. Retrieved April 20, 2010.
3. Green Cross, ATFT Foundation, and Mexican Association for Crisis Therapy, as well as ACEP.

This work by Truthout is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License.

Tags: Psychology, therapy, alternative medicine, energy psychology, tapping, acupressure points, David Gruder, Energy Medicine Institute, truthout, Association for Comprehensive Energy Psychology, acupuncture points, APA, ban, Emotional Freedom Technique