Transformative Power of Integrative Medicine

[Guest guest]

Medicine and Spirituality:

An Interview with Dr. Larry Dossey

 

By David Jay Brown

 

Larry Dossey, M.D., is considered one of the

world & #8217;s experts on mind-body medicine, and is

one of the leading spokespeople for integrating

spirituality with medicine.

He is the author of ten books on the role of

consciousness and spirituality in medicine, including

Space, Time & Medicine, and The New York Times

bestseller Healing Words: The Power of Prayer and the

Practice of Medicine.

 

Dr. Dossey graduated in 1967 from Southwestern Medical

School in Dallas. He then served as a battalion

surgeon in Vietnam and spent hundreds of hours in

helicopters, rushing around with & #8212;paradoxically

enough & #8212;a medical aid bag and a rifle. He says

that these daily close encounters with death

profoundly affected him, and they gave him an immense

sense of gratitude toward life.

 

In the 1970s, after completing his residency in

internal medicine at the Veterans Administration

Hospital and Parkland Hospital in Dallas, he helped to

establish the Dallas Diagnostic Association & #8212;the

largest group of internal medicine practitioners in

the city & #8212;and served as Chief of Staff at the

Medical City Dallas Hospital. While there, he became

intrigued by patients who experienced remissions that

conventional medicine could not adequately explain,

and by the interactions between mind and body.

These experiences lead to the development of a

biofeedback department at the Dallas Diagnostic

Association, and to an interest in alternative and

holistic medical therapy, such as imagery,

visualization, and meditation.

 

In 1982, Dr. Dossey wrote Space, Time & Medicine, the

first of a series of books about the implications that

research into mind-body healing, parapsychology, and

one & #8217;s world view have on medicine. This book

influenced many young physicians at the time and

helped promote a greater acceptance of these ideas in

mainstream medicine. Some of Dr. Dossey & #8217;s other

books include Beyond Illness, Recovering the Soul,

Reinventing Medicine, and Prayer is Good Medicine.

 

More than anything else, Dr. Dossey is probably best

known for his work popularizing the research which

demonstrates that prayer can have measurable healing

effects.

Although the evidence for this phenomena & #8212;known

in the scientific literature as & #8220;remote

healing & #8221; & #8212;is impressive, as with much of

the research into psychic phenomena, the carefully

controlled, double-blind studies that have been done

in this area are virtually unknown to the average

person, and many scientists persist in ignoring the

very interesting and compelling data that has resulted

from these studies.

 

Dr. Dossey served as co-chair of the NIH panel on

Mind/Body Interventions at the government & #8217;s

National Center for Complementary and Alternative

Medicine.

For nearly ten years he was the executive editor of

the medical journal Alternative Therapies in Health

and Medicine, which he helped found in 1995.

Currently, he is executive editor of Exlore: The

Journal of Science and Healing. He is a very popular

public speaker, and has appeared on Oprah Winfrey,

Larry King, Good Morning America, and NBC TV & #8217;s

Dateline. Dr. Dossey was the first physician ever

invited to deliver the Annual Mahatma Gandhi Peace

Foundation Memorial Lecture in New Delhi, India.

 

Dr. Dossey lives in New Mexico. I interviewed him in

January, 2006. I was instantly comfortable with Larry.

He & #8217;s very kind and gracious. I was particularly

struck by his strong sense of optimism and his

contagious sense of hope. We talked about mind-body

medicine, research into remote healing, the problems

with conventional Western medical treatments, and the

future of medicine.

Q: What originally inspired your interest in medicine?

 

Larry: I & #8217;m still trying to figure that out.

There & #8217;s no tradition in my family of medicine,

and there have never been any other doctors in my

family, as far as I know. I seem to have an innate

fascination with science.

I went away to the University of Texas at Austin, and

fell in love with biology and chemistry. I got a

degree in pharmacy, with almost a major in chemistry,

and studied pre-med as well.

I actually worked my way through medical school on

weekends as a registered pharmacist. So I don & #8217;t

know how to explain my fascination and obsession with

medicine & #8212;but it & #8217;s certainly very deep, and

it & #8217;s been a commitment all my life.

Q: How did your experience in Vietnam affect your

perspective on medicine?

 

Larry: I had one of the strangest assignments possible

for a physician in Vietnam. I functioned basically as

a high-powered medic, beyond anything that would

resemble a M.A.S.H. unit, carrying basically an aid

bag and a rifle around. I actually went on patrols,

spent hundreds of hours in helicopters, and

fortunately got back alive & #8212;which took some

doing.

It was a daily confrontation with one & #8217;s own

mortality. I was in combat for the entire time, and

this experience certainly makes one humble about the

blessings one has in this culture. I can assure you

that, and I & #8217;ve reflected on that every day since

I came back from Vietnam.

It & #8217;s been a kind of indwelling presence

really & #8212;the fact that I did remain

alive & #8212;and it & #8217;s filled me with gratitude. I

don & #8217;t think that it changed anything about my

commitment to medicine, or made me see healing in any

different way, but it was a confrontation with the

immediacy of death, and it really was a powerful

experience for me.

Q: What do you think are some of the biggest problems

with the way that medicine is practiced today?

 

Larry: Let me just name three or four. One is that

it & #8217;s become so complex that it & #8217;s

practically unmanageable. The institute of medicine

several years ago began to make a national issue about

the death rate in their hospitals from errors, and the

side-effects of medications, and just flat out

mistakes.

There was a survey of this published in the Journal

of the American Medical Association three or four

years ago in which these statistics were analyzed. In

this paper the third leading cause of death came out

to be hospital care. The death rate in American

hospitals from medical mistakes, errors, and the

side-effects of drugs now ranks as the third leading

cause of death, behind heart disease and cancer.

 

Well, the objectors came forward and were able to

reanalyze the data. I think they demoted it down to

five or six, as if that & #8217;s some great

accomplishment. But many experts still say that

it & #8217;s number three. Even so, the fact that

it & #8217;s even number five or six is still a national

scandal. It should be a disgrace. But somehow people

just accept this as part of the way medicine is. So

the lethality of medicine is one problem. Another

problem with medicine is its applicability.

It & #8217;s been estimated that three-fourths of people

who go to physicians have nothing physically wrong

with them, which means that they & #8217;re beyond the

reach of what high-tech, complex, modern medicine has

to offer.

 

There & #8217;s also a problem with the expense.

We & #8217;re nearing fifty million people in this

country who don & #8217;t have health insurance.

That & #8217;s a national disgrace. We & #8217;re the only

western industrialized country for which this is so.

There was a survey published in The Wall Street

Journal last year which found that medical illness and

medical expense was the leading cause of personal

bankruptcy in the United States. Now, this

didn & #8217;t just apply to low income families.

This applied to middle-income families. Many of them

had college educations, and many of them had health

insurance, but the insurance didn & #8217;t pay. This is

a scandal.

 

Another problem with modern medicine is that it is not

as effective as we want it to be. For example, take

longevity. Currently the United States ranks

twenty-sixth in longevity in countries in the world,

behind countries like Costa Rica. Take infant

mortality. We & #8217;re now thirty-ninth in the world,

behind countries like Cuba, Slovenia, and Aruba. This

is disgraceful. We spend more money on healthcare than

any other country, I think by a factor of three now,

so we & #8217;re not getting our money & #8217;s worth in

many areas. You add up all of these things, and you

think, well, we & #8217;ve lost our way here.

I think we have lost our way, and so those are just a

few of the problems I see.

Q: What do you think can be done to help improve the

situation with modern medicine and reverse those

problems?

 

Larry: For one thing, we urgently need a

government-financed, centralized healthcare plan for

everybody. It & #8217;s shameful that we don & #8217;t

have it; we & #8217;re the only industrialized western

country that does not.

This is a tall order now, particularly when one

political party controls all three branches of

government and is opposed to such changes. But there

are hopeful signs.

 

This gives me an opportunity to make a shameless

advertisement for my new book I mentioned awhile ago

called The Extraordinary Healing Power of Ordinary

Things. In this book I & #8217;ve tried to steer the

medical conversation away from costly, high-tech,

complex things like stem cells, transplantation,

drugs, and surgery. This is not because I & #8217;m

opposed to those things; I really support them.

But high-tech, expensive approaches have dominated

the efforts of medicine in this country, to the

exclusion of many other valuable approaches. So I

singled out fourteen really simple, commonplace,

freely available things that pay huge dividends in

health that are hardly ever talked about.

 

Some of these things have to do with prevention and

with mental attitude. This may sound like New Age

stuff, but the statistics show that the health

benefits of these things are absolutely huge.

Most people in their lives are not going to need

things like an organ transplant or stem cells. Ninety

percent of us live ninety percent of life needing to

focus on a completely different perspective.

I & #8217;ll just give you one example & #8212;optimism.

People who are optimistic live longer and have a lower

incidence of disease than people who are pessimistic.

Who ever talks about this?

 

One could single out any number of other

extraordinarily simple things that pass under the

radar screen yet yield huge health benefits. So we

need a greater sense of openness to the simple, the

plain, the ordinary.

 

A part of a physician & #8217;s education should focus

on prevention, and we need a government that

emphasizes prevention through public health measures.

We need to provide some sort of safety net for people

who get over their heads with horrible illnesses and

can never get out again. The need is urgent. For

instance, the leading cause of personal bankruptcy in

America is medical costs, and most of these

bankruptcies occur in middle-class families.

I & #8217;m not a medical architect who sits around at

high policy levels and imagines how we might work this

out. But I do know we need to spend national energy

and federal capital making these things happen.

 

The emphasis in medical technology and pharmaceutical

manufacturing is on shareholder profits. Like

what & #8217;s the new Viagra going to be? I & #8217;m not

opposed to corporate profits, but the tail has begun

to wag the dog. Today we have this widespread practice

of private, academic medical researchers who are in

bed with corporations, getting stock options, perks,

and kickbacks on products they develop.

In many cases, the corporations control the design and

reporting of clinical trials. We & #8217;ve taken our

eye off the ball. The nation & #8217;s medical endeavor

should be about helping healthy people stay healthy,

and helping sick people get well. We & #8217;ve lost our

way in this mission, and we need to wake up.

 

Q: How did you become interested in the mind-body

connection?

 

Larry: As so often is the case in doctors & #8217;

accounts of how they become interested in these

matters, it was through a personal medical problem.

From grade school onward, I had profoundly severe

migraine headaches, associated, not just with pain,

nausea, and vomiting, but also with partial blindness.

The partial blindness was the worst thing, and this

almost derailed my career as a physician before it

even got started. I actually tried to drop out of

medical school because of this problem. I was

convinced it was an ethical issue. I was certain that

sooner or later I would have an episode of partial

blindness and hurt or kill someone, in surgery for

example.

 

However, my advisor wouldn & #8217;t permit me to drop

out. He told me that the problem would get better and

it got a lot worse.

This was really stress-related, but back in those days

one didn & #8217;t really talk a lot about stress, and

certainly the mind-body connection was a term that had

yet to be invented when I was in medical school. We

talked about psychosomatic disease, but we certainly

didn & #8217;t talk about the mind-body connection in

positive ways.

 

In any case, back in the early 70s, biofeedback burst

on the medical scene in this country quite by

accident. I found out that reports were coming out of

biofeedback centers that people with migraines who

practiced biofeedback noticed that their symptoms got

better.

I was desperate because none of the medications that

were in common use worked for me.

I chased all over the country learning how to do this

for myself, and it was a miraculous outcome. It was

almost like turning a switch in my brain and my body.

I learned about the mind-body connection, about the

meaning of relaxation, and the use of imagery and

visualization.

I took up meditation because it was a short step from

biofeedback learning to meditating, and I became

absolutely fascinated with the mind-body research

area.

 

I began to follow it intensely, got certified in

teaching biofeedback, became something of an expert in

the field, and established one of the first

biofeedback labs in the state of Texas for my patients

and the patients of the other physicians in my group.

I taught biofeedback for years as part of my internal

medicine practice.

 

From there it was really easy for me to begin to

follow the research in remote healing and intercessory

prayer that began to come out of universities and

medical schools in the mid-eighties.

I was really primed for that. That & #8217;s really a

fairly short version of how I got interested in the

mind-body area, and consciousness in general.

I & #8217;m not sure that I would have become interested

in mind-body medicine as quickly as I did without the

impetus of a personal medical problem, and sheer

desperation. But I certainly had a personal incentive.

My back was really against the wall professionally and

personally because of the intractable migraine, for

which nothing else was helpful.

 

Q: What role do you think one & #8217;s mind plays in

the health of the body?

 

Larry: I think that & #8216;bodily health & #8217; is

practically an oxymoron. One can & #8217;t talk anymore

about the health of the body without bringing in the

effects of consciousness & #8212;by which I mean belief

systems, meanings, emotions, attitudes,

feeling-states, and so on.

The day is long gone when we can separate the two.

It & #8217;s just inconsistent with the data.

When we try to do this we really come up short, even

when we attempt to treat the body as just a physical

system and ignore the mind.

We have to acknowledge the numerous double-blind,

randomized controlled studies that take into account

the placebo response, which clearly is an indication

that the mind cannot be ignored. The placebo response

is simply an expression of expectation, suggestion,

and optimism about how a treatment is going to turn

out. There may have been a time when doctors could get

away with focusing on the body and ignoring the mind,

but those days are gone forever.

 

Q: Can you talk a little about the research that has

been done in remote healing and why you think that

these studies are important?

 

Larry: They & #8217;re important because they force a

total revision of our ideas about the nature of

consciousness and its relationship to the brain and

body. The old idea is that consciousness was simply an

epiphenomenon of the brain; the brain made

consciousness sort of like the liver made bile.

In any case, the effects of consciousness were

confined to one & #8217;s own body. They had no ability,

in principle, to reach out and make a difference

remotely in someone else & #8212;but that & #8217;s

precisely the new image that is forming on the medical

horizon.

 

It & #8217;s an image of what I call & #8220;nonlocal

mind. & #8221; & #8220;Nonlocal & #8221; is simply a fancy

word for & #8220;infinite. & #8221; Nonlocal mind is

unrestricted to specific points in space, such as

individual brains and bodies, and it & #8217;s

unrestricted to specific points in time, such as the

present moment.

This sounds nutty and off-the-wall to people

who & #8217;ve bumped into this for the first time, but

if one has the willingness to look at the data

emerging from healing studies, I think that the

picture becomes quite compelling & #8212;at least it has

for me and many other researchers in the field.

 

So, just to summarize where we stand data-wise, Dr.

Wayne Jonas, who is the former director of the

National Center for Complementary and Alternative

Medicine, recently did a review and came up with 2,200

papers and citations in this field of remote healing.

Over two hundred of these studies were controlled

clinical trials and laboratory studies.

The quality of the studies is quite good.

Using what are called CONSORT criteria, he was able to

assign either an & #8220;A & #8221; or a & #8220;B & #8221;

level of excellence to these studies in remote

healing. Eighteen of these studies are major

controlled studies in humans, eleven of which show

statistically significant results.

The laboratory studies look at the effects of

people & #8217;s intentions on nonhumans & #8212;rabbits,

mice, rats,

plants, even bacteria growing in test tubes, fungi,

yeast, and so on.

 

Occasionally the subjects of these lab studies are

inanimate objects, such as random event generators.

The majority of all these studies yield statistical

significance, which shows that something is going on

that you can & #8217;t ascribe to chance.

This is just a huge area.

It & #8217;s infuriated skeptics, who really

aren & #8217;t very much inclined to look at the data or

even read all the studies. All told, this data calls

into question fundamental assumptions about the nature

of consciousness, as I & #8217;ve mentioned, and

it & #8217;s forcing a revision of how consciousness

operates or manifests in the world.

 

There & #8217;s a paradox here, because for most of

human history people believed that these things

actually happen, but it & #8217;s only in the past two

hundred years that we & #8217;ve developed a tremendous

level of intellectual indigestion over this idea that

consciousness could function remotely.

So it & #8217;s ironic that we & #8217;re getting back to

this ancient idea. What & #8217;s further ironic is that

science, which has denied for two hundred years that

these things are possible, is pointing the way back.

So, in a sense, science is shooting itself in the foot

by producing this sort of evidence that contradicts

what it has claimed regarding consciousness for two

centuries.

 

Q: Why do you think that the study of consciousness

and research into psychic phenomena has important

relevance for medicine?

 

Larry: There are several reasons. One is that it has

health consequences. In my judgment the studies

clearly show that people & #8217;s intentions, prayers,

and healing efforts at a distance can make the

difference between life and death.

It & #8217;s important also because we really do want

an accurate idea of the nature of our own

consciousness. It & #8217;s important because honoring

this information leads us to a view of consciousness

which is full of hope about our origins and destiny.

 

If we acknowledge that consciousness is

nonlocal & #8212;that it & #8217;s infinite in space and

time & #8212;then this really opens up all sorts of

possibilities for the survival of consciousness

following physical death.

If you reason through this, and follow the

implications of these studies, you begin to realize

that consciousness that & #8217;s nonlocal and

unrestricted in time is immortal. It & #8217;s eternal.

 

This is as hopeful as the current view of the fate of

consciousness is dismal.

This totally reverses things. So we are lead to a

position, I think, where we see that even though the

body will certainly die, the most essential part of

who we are can & #8217;t die, even if it

tried & #8212;because it & #8217;s nonlocally distributed

through time and space.

 

Our grim vision of the finality of death is revised.

Death is no longer viewed as a gruesome annihilation

or the total destruction of all that we are. So there

are tremendous spiritual implications that flow from

these considerations, in addition to the implications

for health.

In fact, I believe that the implications for health

are the least of it. A lot of people who encounter

this area take a practical, bare bones, utilitarian

approach to it. They say, wow, now we & #8217;ve got a

nifty new item in our black bag & #8212;a new trick to

help people become healthier.

Certainly these studies do suggest that this is a

proper use of healing intentions and prayer, and

I & #8217;m all for that, but the thing that really gets

my juices flowing is the implication of this research

for immortality. For me, that & #8217;s the most

exciting contribution of this entire field.

 

The fear of death has caused more pain and suffering

for human beings throughout history than all the

physical diseases combined.

The fear of death is the big unmentionable & #8212;and

this view of consciousness is a cure for that disease,

that fear of death.

 

Q: What role do you think that spirituality plays in

health?

 

Larry: There are a lot of people who just don & #8217;t

want to get close to this prayer stuff because they

think & #8220;it & #8217;s just parapsychology & #8221; and

that all parapsychology is crazy.

However, they often feel a little more comfortable

when they look at another set of data having to do

with the impact of spirituality on health. There are

over 1,200 studies which look at the connections

between religious behavior, such as attending worship

services, and health outcomes.

Currently meta-analyses of these studies show that

people who follow some sort of religious path in their

life live an average of seven to thirteen years longer

than people who don & #8217;t.

That & #8217;s just a huge health benefit.

There isn & #8217;t a whole heck of lot that physicians

can recommend to people that will add seven to

thirteen years on average to their lifespan.

 

People who like to think materialistically can come up

with some fairly naturalistic explanations for these

health benefits.

For example, people who follow religious paths often

have pretty good health habits. They may smoke or

drink less. They are part of a social network by

virtue of belonging to a congregation, and rich social

networks have a health payoff. Nobody argues much

against that anymore. Also, these people have a sense

of meaning and purpose in life that comes from their

religious affiliation.

So if you add up all these things then it & #8217;s not

hard for even skeptics to imagine how people who are

religious might enjoy longer life and have a lower

incidence of disease. And they do.

 

But it & #8217;s when people go into the area that

Rupert Sheldrake, I and others have ventured into,

where we talk about the remote effects of

consciousness, that people really get cold feet.

So it & #8217;s been our self-appointed, elective task

to hold people & #8217;s feet to the fire and say, look,

this information isn & #8217;t going to go away.

There & #8217;s too much of it.

It & #8217;s becoming more abundant, so wake up. This

is where we & #8217;re headed, like it or not.

 

Q: How do you see spirituality and medicine becoming

more integrated in the future?

 

Larry: That & #8217;s inevitable. One of the most

telling indicators is how medical schools have

responded.

Back in 1993, when I first began to publish in this

field with a book called Healing Words,

there were only three medical schools in the country

that had any coursework exploring the role of

spirituality in health, out of one hundred and

twenty-five medical schools total.

Now ninety schools offer such coursework.

That is a historic development.

Ninety medical schools have either formal courses, a

lecture series, or some feature of their curriculum

that honors and addresses this field.

So it & #8217;s kind of a done deal.

 

Young doctors have much less of a problem with this

than my generation has had. One major reason is that

half the medical-school enrollment these days is made

up of young women. They have a lot less trouble with

these ideas than intellectually-oriented guys do. So I

think that the entry of women in medicine has really

opened up things quite a bit.

 

In the final analysis, the evidence favoring

spirituality is so impressive that there & #8217;s no

way that medicine is going to be able to stand on the

sidelines and ignore it.

Sooner or later, good data rises to the top and

prejudices sink to the bottom. This process may take

awhile, and there will certainly be people who will

try to obstruct it, but I think that there & #8217;s no

way to stop it.

 

I see this in my own career. I am embarking on a

four-month author book tour next week, and slotted

into this tour are lecture appearances at medical

schools all over the country.

 

There & #8217;s an old saying that & #8217;s attributed to

Max Planck, the physicist, who helped create the

revolution in physics in the last century.

Planck said that science changes funeral by funeral.

And as Einstein once said, & #8220;It & #8217;s harder to

crack a prejudice than an atom. & #8221;

I used to believe that it & #8217;s possible to come up

with such compelling evidence that it would change

things overnight.

Well, that didn & #8217;t happen in physics, and

it & #8217;s not going to happen in medicine. These

things always take awhile. Moreover, there are some

physicians who are so resistant to these ideas about

consciousness and healing that they will never come

around.

They & #8217;ll simply die off, as Planck suggested.

I hate to say it, but that has come as a consolation

to me, periodically through the years (laughter).

 

 

David Jay Brown

is the author of four volumes of interviews with

leading-edge thinkers, Mavericks of the Mind, Voices

from the Edge, Conversations on the Edge of the

Apocalypse, and Mavericks of Medicine.

(Mavericks of Medicine will be published by Smart

Publications as a book in late 2006.)

He is also the author of two science fiction novels,

Brainchild and Virus.

David holds a master & #8217;s degree in psychobiology

from New York University, and was responsible for the

California-based research in two of British biologist

Rupert Sheldrake & #8217;s bestselling books on

unexplained phenomena in science: Dogs That Know When

Their Owners Are Coming Home and The Sense of Being

Stared At.

To find out more about David & #8217;s work visit his

award-winning web site: www.mavericksofthemind.com

 

 

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