UPI ARTICLE, FROM DATA BASE SEARCH. 'ESP-ACUPUNCTURE LINK REPORTED.

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: STARGATE
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP96-00791R000200230044-4
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: U
• Document Page Count: 3
• Document Creation Date: November 4, 2016
• Document Release Date: December 7, 1998
• Sequence Number: 44
• Publication Date: December 10, 1981
• Content Type: NOTES

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LEVEL 1 - 7 OF 8 STORIES
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Proprietary to the United Press International 1981
December 10, 1981, Thursday, AM cycle
SECTION: Regional News
DISTRIBUTION: California
LENGTH: 755 words
HEADLINE: ESP-acupuncture link reported
BYLINE: By TODD R. EASTHAM
DATELINE: SAN FRANCISCO
BODY:
Scientists in the People's Republic of China are experimenting with evidence
of links between extrasensory perception and traditional Chinese medicine.
Banned as ''corrupt and useless'' under the tenets of the 1960s Cultural
Revolution, the research is now published freely in Chinese journals, although
it receives no government funding or recognition.
Recent conferences on psychic phenomenon and its relation to acupuncture and
an ancient deep-breathing discipline called " Qigong " now draw hundreds of
interested scholars, including Americans.
What has attracted the most attention in China is a body of research
conducted with children, ages 7-12, who purportedly exhibit exceptional
psychic ability.
Reports of these studies inspired a study team led by San Francisco
parapsychologist Stanley Krippner to visit China for two weeks last October.
Krippner revealed the team's findings to UPI Wednesday.
The Committee for the Study of Exceptional Human Functions met with 10 of the
allegedly gifted children, but they proved unable to demonstrate any
statistically unusual psychic ability during the group's brief stay, Krippner
said.
However, previous research findings were ''provocative,'' he said, and
further research in more relaxed settings using more sophisticated American
equipment could be significant.
More compelling were Chinese experiments into the physical side effects of
ESP-related phenomenon.
Physicists working in their spare time at the Institute of High Level Physics
in Peking have demonstrated that acupressure points show a lower skin resistance
and higher conductivity to electricity during periods of increased psychic
activity.
The Chinese have shown that the acupressure point on the back of the neck
gets hotter during experiments in clairvoyance and telepathy.
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But ''the change relates to the task itself rather than to the success of the
task,'' Krippner noted. Temperature increases whether the subject's guess is
right or wrong.
The research is unique, Krippner said, and with primitive equipment, lack of
government funding and relative inexperience in the field, the Chinese ''have
accomplished a great deal.''
Another area of study with far-reaching potential involves an ancient
movement and deep breathing discipline called Qigong.
''They claim that once people start to study Qigong their psychic ability
increases, '' he said, noting that researchers have demonstrated that Qigong
increases heat and photon emissions from the body and intensifies the body's
electrostatic field.
The Chinese believe that practice of Qigong, first recorded in the ''Yellow
Emperor's Classic on Internal Medicine'' written at about 400 B.C. ''spreads the
vital energy, called Chi, through the body,'' said Krippner.
They are conducting research into this folk science in laboratory settings
which have not yet produced a significant body of data but show much promise, he
said.
''They claim that once people start to study Qigong their psychic ability
increases,'' he said, noting the researchers have demonstrated that Qigong
increases heat and photon emissions from the body and intensifies the body's
electrostatic field.
'The most interesting thing to us is that a medical technician named Ku has
built a machine that artificially produces these fields and is using them on
sick people,'' Krippner said.
Ku has had a particularly high success rate with patients suffering from high
blood pressure. Seventy percent show lower blood pressure readings after
spending time in the "Qigong Machine.''
'The Chinese are eager to find a physical explanation for psychic
phenomenon, '' said Krippner, the author of a book on mind exploration in the
Soviet Union and eastern Europe.
While the Soviets are purportedly looking at ESP for ''military and strategic
purposes, '' he commented, Chinese researchers are looking more at medical
applications.
'This work is very controversial in China, so to justify their work they
tend to look for practical applications -- especially in medicine,'' he said.
Reports from Soviet defectors indicate the Soviets, in contrast, are looking
at potential for mind control and intelligence-gathering in ESP-related
phenomenon.
Although some observers fear the Soviets -- or their American counterparts --
will develop sophisticated methods of ''psychic warfare, '' there is no evidence
to show that they have found ''anything useful,'' Krippner said.
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The study team
found ''absolutely no indications'' of ''psywar '' research
in
China, he added.
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