A Metaphysical loss - Dr. Elisabeth Targ, "Distant Healing" researcher, dead at 40

[Tiassa]

Immediate Release: "A metaphysical loss - the passing of Dr. Elisabeth Targ"

The Office of the Tiassa has just recently learned of the passing of Dr. Elisabeth Targ, whose work has in the past been presented at Sciforums in considerations of "Distant Healing", or healing by prayer.

Following is an obituary notice from the Institute of Noetic Sciences:

It is with great sadness and sense of loss that we announce that Elisabeth Targ passed away on July 18 at 11:11pm surrounded by loved ones at the age of 40, 16 days before her 41st birthday. Her transition was peaceful, conscious and free of pain.

Elisabeth Targ, M.D. was the Director of the Complementary Medicine Research Institute at California Pacific Medical Center Research Institute, Assistant Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at the University of California, San Francisco, and a Fellow of the Institute of Noetic Sciences. She was the principal investigator for a study of integrative, psychosocial and psychospiritual support for women with breast cancer. Previously she was the principal investigator for two studies of Distant Healing and prayer for people with advanced AIDS. Recently she received an award from the National Institute for Healthcare Research (NIH) to develop a curriculum on Spirituality and Psychiatry for residents in psychiatry. She had two additional NIH institute grants for research in distant healing one for the study of distance healing for patients with gliobastoma and one study comparing healing efforts by nurses vs. experienced "healers".

Dr. Targ presented some of her findings and ideas related to distant healing in Noetic Sciences Review #49 (Aug. - Nov., 1999), which article is still available online through IoNS.

Dr. Targ's work touches on a difficult field of much importance to humanity. The Institute of Noetic Sciences, in their IONS Review, in the same issue, sought methodology and proposals for experiments leading to a quantification of the physical properties of thought; while this office has never heard of those experiments being performed, or seen the results of them, the question is a valuable one, for even psychiatrists and neurologists don't have a straight answer to the physical properties of thought.

In this sense, Dr. Targ's passing brings sadness. I did not know Dr. Targ personally, but I did find important ideas in that of her work to which I was exposed. And while healing by prayer seems to most either a ludicrous violation of reality or else a miracle of their chosen God, Dr. Targ's research is essentially the slightest hint of an iceberg: if we come to understand the physical properties of thought merely in order to endorse the prayer-healers or officially recant them, well ... at least we will have come to understand the physical properties of thought.

Drink up, dreamers ....


Noetic discussion: Power of Prayer and Healing, discussing the work of Dr. Elisabeth Targ.

"ETarg", an Elisabeth Targ dot-org is not available as this goes to press: http://www.etarg.org