HISTORY

Monterey Institute for the Study of Alternative Healing Arts – MISAHA – was founded in 1990. The objective was to bring most talented healers from around the world and test their efficacy in clinical trials at specialized medical facilities. It was clear that results of one healer could not be extrapolated on other healers but confirming the phenomenon would justify further study of what now is called “energy healing” in the nomenclature of the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM) of the National Institutes of Heath (NIH).

During 12 years, from 1992 to 2004, MISAHA invited numerous healers to pre-evaluate their efficacy and published a quarterly periodical, MISAHA Newsletter (MN).

Most often we couldn’t find either funding or a medical facility that would agree to conduct the study. One time when Veterans Administration Research Center in Mountain View, CA agreed to study a Chinese “healer” whom we invited after publishing his article in MN (# 14-15, 1996) the latter proved to be a smart liar (see MN # 16-17, 1997).  

In 1994 we arranged a preliminary testing of two Russian healers, husband and wife Maikovs, in St. Petersburg, Russia, at two children’s hospitals on children with cerebral palsy. Professional neurologists (see Evaluation by Professor O. V. Bogdanov, MD in MN #9, 1995) observed significant positive results reflected in EEG, Echoencephalography, Rheoencephalography and clinical evaluation using a modified Bortfield-Varman scale. A group of San Francisco pediatricians led by M. Cantwell, MD were ready to conduct a preliminary trial of these healers on 12 diplegic and quadriplegic children and the American United Cerebral Palsy Association (AUSPA) promised to fund the study at $50,000. However, at the end of 1998, AUSPA refused to fund this study.

It took many years and a lot of disappointment for a naive scientist to understand that the task was unsolvable in our country: the phenomenon of energy healing challenges the scientific paradigm. Current biophysics cannot explain not only this interaction but the emergence of life itself. Peer-reviewers are guarding the paradigm, scientists are being paid for implementation of what the current science knows and not for scientific breakthroughs; besides, biologists and biochemists are not in a position to challenge physicists. The judicial system would allow hundreds cancer patients to die from the standardized chemotherapy but couldn’t accept one death from a not approved treatment.

For all these years MISAHA established contacts with a rather broad group of scientists and practitioners from throughout the world interested in these phenomena. Thus, in 2001 an idea was born to conduct an international scientific symposium on Paradoxical Effects in Biophysics and Medicine with the ensuing publication of the Proceedings (see MN # 32-35, 2001). Upon the preliminary approval of NCCAM, we filed a Grant Application with NIH. The symposium was planned for December 2004. Many relevant articles and 41 abstracts by scientists from 13 countries were published in MISAHA Newsletters # 32-45 (2001-2004). However, in the middle of 2004 the Scientific Review Group of NCCAM decided that “the scientific and technical merit” of the symposium does not deserve any funding (see MN # 40-45, 2004). Thus, the Symposium did not come through and this was when we decided to start working on the monograph.