In 1993 a New England Journal of Medicine article estimated that Americans spent $12 billion a year on complementary therapies. In 1995, a study by the San Francisco Chronicle and KRON-TV concluded that 41% of adults in the San Francisco Bay Area reported using at least one complementary therapy in the last year. Yet there is little reliable information available on which judge how helpful or harmful these approaches are.

Close ties with the Institute for Health and Healing and the Health and Healing clinic at California Pacific Medical Center provide scientists with the opportunity to conduct rigorous trials evaluating a variety of complementary approaches. Among the practices studied are remote healing for persons with AIDS, Tibetan and Chinese herbal therapy for breast cancer, and the use of Jin Shin Jytsu as an adjuvant therapy for ICU patients.