To ask if you believe radical remission is possible?

[Edenspirits73]

I’ve just read this book https://www.amazon.co.uk/Radical-Remission-Surviving-Cancer-Against/dp/0062268740

It’s written by an American researcher, lecturer and oncologist and charts her experiences of gathering cases of radical remission from all over the world. It’s presented in quite a scientific way & she charts the 9 things that all the people who went into radical remission & had in common. It’s fascinating too.

Ironically it was recommended to me when my dad was dying of bowel cancer - end stage for him.

It’s a real book of hope (but not false hope) as it charts a largely unreported area of health - and an idea that people survive and thrive even end stage 4 cancer.

So am I being unreasonable to believe? Obviously these are real case studies too as she felt it was a totally unreported area of medicine but it feels like believing that you can heal from cancer is not a mainstream belief at all - it’s almost contraversial and held up as false hope I think.

Intererested in thoughts!

Yes, I agree. But I still don’t think from reading the book that she’s a grifter.

Read the reviews on Amazon - like me, people just found it an interesting hopeful read. And that includes people with cancer.

Even having watched my Dad fade away and suffer so much indignity and not want to die, I still wasn’t offended by what she was saying.

Why is it a bad thing? Ask those who are in the throes of dying and whose relatives/ friends may think they are dying because of something they have done, or not done(delete as appropriate).

When you have a disease that may be fatal, it's not always down to what you've done or not done. It just IS.

I know that truth is sometimes hard to bear, that we cannot control everything. But it is the truth.

There are certainly well documented cases of "radical remission" in that someones cancer clears when they are given a terminal diagnosis - but those cases are vanishingly rare.

If there was really anything that could externally be done to cause that to happen serious researchers would have been all over it years ago.

Sadly stuff like this is just making money out of selling false hope to people who a desperate for it, and that in my book is the lowest thing you can do.

I’m in the ‘this is bollocks’ camp. The only one that might realistically help re reducing risk is diet but it is ridiculous to say that changing diet and taking some herbs will reverse stage 4 cancer.

The people might believe those 9 things helped but it doesn’t mean they actually did especially if some of them were also on conventional medical treatment.

There are definitely cases of radical remission because that’s just how the body works - sometimes these things happen.

It has absolutely fuck all to do with anything someone with cancer does or doesn’t do, and to suggest otherwise is a) insulting and b) so obviously a moneymaking exercise on the part of this ‘author’ that it’s concerning you can’t see it for what it is.

My DM died a terrible death from cancer a couple of years ago, I do believe that if she didn't have so many supressed emotions, she would have gone into remission and survived.

She is not an oncologist - she is a 'counselor in the field of integrated oncology' - she is a doctor because she has a phd - that is not the same thing by any stretch of the imagination - but worded in a way that will make people think she is

She's also a screenwriter and actress

?

It’s written by an American researcher, lecturer and oncologist

Just to clarify, OP - she is not a medical doctor, and she is not an oncologist. She describes herself as a researcher (anyone can describe themselves as such), lecturer (you can hire her or see her on her lecture tour), and "consultant in the field of integrative oncology" (meaning you can pay her to advise you on positive thinking or yoga in relation to cancer). She is not a consultant physician in the UK sense.

It's becoming more and more common, especially with modern drugs. Not all of us are so lucky though - the drugs don't prevent cancer metastasizing for everyone.

I work at a University and most of the academics have a PhD in their field. And they have Dr in their title. They are usually experts in their field and that includes scientists in cancer research.

Whether in this case she is or not seems up for debate but don’t be sneery about her Phd. Most experts in cancer research are not medical doctors, they are academics with PhDs.

@KrisAkabusi @Edenspirits73

The sad thing is that there must surely be many many researchers looking for such happenings which can be verified scientifically as having an effect more than chance. We do - of course - hear of "spontaneous remission" but at what frequency "really".

She may not be a grifter - not having read the book I couldn't judge.

But I suspect if the book serves any real purpose it is in allowing people to believe they are not 100% guaranteed to die, because some people can't live their remaining time well if they believe that. And some people do survive, through luck. What they attribute their survival to is probably culturally determined - in one country is will be prayer or sacrificing chickens, in the US it will be coffee enemas and positive thinking.

I am so sorry to hear about your mum & obviously you are entitled to believe what you choose to believe about her death. Personally I would hate someone to think this about me as it implies that I had some element of control over it. There’s no evidence that releasing anger or other emotions would make any difference.

But she is not an oncologist, and that is important to clarify.

I think you should research her properly plenty of people have made money saying these things and been proved not to be a cure but people will pay for a book when desperate.

Yeah that’s pretty disappointing. I won’t be buying the book.

The man who claimed autism and inoculations were linked was qualified too he's since admitted he made it up. He got a lot of attention and presumably money from it.

Maybe not by U.K. standards, no, and I can’t comment on that.

But I think it’s also important to clarify that it’s scientists in labs, often at Universities, that are doing the research into cancer. My uni has a highly regarded life sciences sept doing research into diseases.

As we don’t know her research methods, it’s hard to comment but I also work with social scientists doing research into all kinds of things - none of it with less value.

They've also proved Amazon reviews are not always accurate. A handful of cases from the millions across the world is more likely to be false hope....and as you say people got hope from it ....and she made money.
My father and sister died from cancer and I've had a grade 4 breast cancer it hadn't spread

You're assuming that these things worked for the people who survived.

Interestingly, shark attacks on people are significantly higher in locations that sell a lot of ice-cream.

Correlation does not equal causation.

My DH works in oncology. Sorry but there is just no such thing as a cure. I believe they use the words radical remission because saying it's a cure would bring lawsuits over it.

😆 really?

Based on your description of the book, it's a series of case studies where she assessed whether certain lifestyle characteristics were present or not in the presumably self-selecting group of subjects.

That is not scientific and it's not an appropriate approach to assess causation.

I remember being struck by a comment in Bernie Siegel's "Love, Medicine, Miracles" about how there are cases which defy medical expectation, and the trajectory of a cancer changes for no obvious reason, sometimes to the point of spontaneously resolving. And that no one studies these cases to find out why and how this happens