Skeptic questions veracity of Burk's column
(04/15/98 4:00am)
Larry Burk's defense of therapeutic touch in his column in the Apr. 8 edition of The Chronicle ranges from the ridiculous to the ludicrous. Therapeutic touch is a bizarre practice, (no matter how many people use it) which alleges that the body generates an "energy field." By the way, this supposed "energy field" cannot be measured by any known scientific instrument, which leads to the question: What is this energy? The therapeutic touch practitioner moves his or her hands above the patient. Somehow, the unmeasurable "energy field" from the alleged healer is able to alter the undetectable "energy field" of the sick patient, and like magic (which it certainly seems to be), the patient is cured.