Therapeutic Touch: Fifth Force or Myth?

Saturday, May 9, 1:30 pm - Public & Free

Professor Eugenie V. Mielczarek, Emeritus
Department of Physics, George Mason University

Bethesda Library, 7400 Arlington Rd, Bethesda, MD
Near Bethesda metro (map) (directions) (flyer)

Alternative Medicine’s intrusion into science-based medicine fractures our medical care. A recent article in the Health Section of the Washington Post and information from its reporter located a paper in the Journal of Orthopedic Research claiming the ability of Therapeutic Touch practitioners to control the growth, in vitro, of healthy and cancerous bone cells. Therapeutic Touch depends on the general public's misunderstanding of energy fields and their need for mythology to facilitate its expanding use among medical institutions.

Eugenie Vorburger Mielczarek is Emeritus Professor of Physics at George Mason University. Her experimental researches in materials science, chemical physics and biological physics have been published in Physical Review, Journal of Chemical Physics and Biology of Metals. She has been a visiting scientist at the National Institutes of Health, and a visiting Professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. She is a recipient of the Distinguished Faculty Award at George Mason University. Mielczarek has advised National Public Radio, judged the U. S. Steel-American Institute of Physics prize for science journalism, and written book reviews for Physics Today. She was the primary editor of Key Papers in Biological Physics and author of Iron, Nature's Universal Element: Why People Need Iron & Animals Make Magnets, a popular science book. Her most recent article was a review of research frontiers linking Physics and Biology.