|
|
 |
| |
Roxana Curtis with her African guides in Tanzania |
Can spiritual healing help fight cancer?
Trials to test laying-on of hands
CLAIMS that spiritual healing can benefit seriously ill patients are to be tested by researchers at University College London Hospital this summer.
Healers based at the Euston Road hospital plan to study whether their work helps increase the number of disease-beating white blood cells in cancer sufferers.
UCLH has one of the country’s few dedicated spiritual healing teams. The 10 healers offer their services to cancer patients. They believe they are having a positive effect on the lives of sufferers, but there is no clinically proven evidence to back the claims.
Department manager Angela Buxton first became interested in spiritual healing when her seven-year-old son Sam died from leukaemia after a three-year battle. She set up the Sam Buxton Sunflower Trust in his memory, and has used the proceeds from her fundraising to offer spiritual healing at the hospital’s cancer department.
A concert last year, which featured rock stars Paul Weller, Robert Plant and Deep Purple, raised £80,000, allowing the team to recruit new part-time members.
Now research is to be conducted to find out if spiritual healing has any real effect, and why. She said: “Science has not caught up with how it works. Anecdotal evidence shows it works but we need hard evidence.”
Spiritual healing involves touching the patient. Healer Isobel Salisbury said: “We lay on our hands and channel energy into the patient. We are imparting love and light into them.”
Healers then write up their notes, detailing what they have done with each patient.
The 10-strong team costs the hospital about £80,000 a year. Other funding comes from charitable donations.
Ms Buxton said: “We are looking at people who have had chemotherapy. We want to know if white blood cells are increasing after giving patients healing.”
The trial needs 50 volunteers to make the results valid. The study will look at patients suffering from any kind of cancer that leaves them neutropenic – meaning they have virtually no white blood cells.
Ms Buxton added: “We don’t think healing is a placebo effect, and this trial will help show the effects.”
THE memory of a close friend inspired Roxana Curtis to beat the odds and ascend the summit of Kilimanjaro in Tanzania.
The doctor, who used to work at the Royal Free, witnessed her friend’s battle with cancer at the Mary Curie Hampstead Hospice, and was moved to attempt the feat in support of the charity.
But disaster struck when she developed back problems that forced her into surgery just eight weeks before the climb. Despite constant pain, she went ahead with the climb.
She said: “A doctor friend estimated that I would only make 2,000 metres (of the 5,895m summit). But I was determined. When I want something, I’ll move mountains – that was my catch phrase.”
The 50-year-old became the first Salvadorean to reach the summit, but her cause was always personal. “I wanted to inspire other women and cancer sufferers to overcome physical and emotional obstacles and achieve their goals,” she said.
So far she has raised £2,400 in sponsorship for her climb. To contribute, visit www.justgiving.com/roxana. |
 |
|
| |
|
|
|
