Radical Remission: Surviving Cancer Against All Odds

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When I was researching my book Mind Over Medicine, I stumbled across the Spontaneous Remission Project put together by the Institute of Noetic Sciences, which collected over 3500 case studies published in the medical literature about people who experienced spontaneous remissions from seemingly “incurable diseases.” Most of the case studies revolved around people with Stage 4 cancers who either declined conventional treatment or were given treatment deemed by doctors to be inadequate for cure. But the Spontaneous Remission Project also includes case studies of people who had remissions from heart failure, autoimmune diseases, high a gunshot wound to the head, and HIV. I’m not convinced of Turner’s thoroughness in interviewing her subjects. I would have liked more detail about how much investigation she did into the stories of the survivors. In her introduction she states she “conducted over a hundred direct interviews and analyzed over a thousand written cases… after analyzing all these cases carefully and repeatedly using qualitative research methods I identified more than seventy-five different factors that may hypothetically play a role…” Given such unknowns we cannot read Turner’s work as a program to fight cancer. The safe conclusion is that each patient should use what is available. This includes proven allopathic treatments as well as potentially helpful non-traditional treatments. This is the case with most of Turner’s respondents also, many of whom had tried modern medical treatments previously, or concurrently, along with the nine hypotheses. As Turner reminds us, she is not arguing against western medical treatment.

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Another problem with Turner’s data is its limited size. Although she conducted over a hundred interviews, she is dealing with only a small number of respondents (she doesn’t state the exact number) who have experienced radical remission. In contrast, the number of cancer sufferers is vast—the National Cancer Institute states that 1.8 million new diagnoses were made in the US, and 600,000 died from cancer in a single year, 2020, a rate equal to 442.4 people per 100,000. In addition in 2020 there were 16.9 million cumulative cancer survivors living in the US. And worldwide there will be 29.5 million new cancer cases per year by 2040. On a societal level cancer’s scale is impossible to ignore yet its scale makes it difficult to comprehend. In this light a few hundred or even a thousand radical remission exceptions are not very meaningful. What I really want is I want an exhaustive database that, ideally, has every, single radical remission case that ever happened in one place. That’s my goal, because once we have proof in numbers, then the scientific community won’t be able to ignore them anymore. To start off, her sample size for her study is 1000 people. This may seem fairly large, but to put things in perspective, 9.5 million people die of cancer every year worldwide. So if 1000 people out of those 9.5 million miraculously survive every year, that's a 0.01% survival rate. That's super low, and probably not even accurate, as the people in the study probably didn't all have cancer in the same year, which would make the survival rate even smaller.

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Take Matthew, for example, who was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer at twenty-seven years old. He had tried everything Western medicine had to offer and his doctors had given up and turned him over to Hospice care. With nothing left to lose, Matthew decided to embark upon a spiritual adventure, so his friends and family all donated money to send him to see the healer John of God in Brazil. First, if you are the kind of person who absolutely never believes in ghosts, don't even try to read this book. There are no ghosts here, but for this book to even be readable, you have to be open to the idea that something might possibly, could be real, even if it defies all reason and there's no scientific explanation. You don't have to buy into alternative medicine, or believe in the paranormal, to get something positive out of this book, but you do need to take everything with a grain of salt.

Radical Remission Author Dr. Kelly Turner on Key Factors for Radical Remission Author Dr. Kelly Turner on Key Factors for

For breast cancer the incidence of spontaneous regression is closely related to the controversy over excessive use of mammography. The Norwegian finding that regression may occur in up to 22% of all tumors detected is probably impacted by the large number of small tumors often detected during mammography. Many of these small tumors may later go away on their own, or not grow. This is not the same for patients with large tumors, however. Overall, general consensus in the field is that spontaneous remission occurs in around 1 out of every 100,000 cancer cases. Clear, courageous, direct: Kelly Turner navigates the stormy waters of cancer treatment and recovery with aplomb. I really like the way she combines storytelling with thorough data analysis. As a cancer survivor I deeply value her even handedness embracing both conventional medicine and complementary health practices. The last thing I need right now is some kind of shaming right/wrong finger-wagging about the dilemmas of responding to a cancer diagnosis. From her research she found 75 factors could account for the healing. Nine of these factors occurred with the greatest frequency. Her book outlines these nine factors, which are: Well, lo and behold, 18 months later they’re better. Right when their COBRA runs out, they’re better. They get the clean scan. That’s not a made-up story. That was about somebody I just interviewed. These things really happen,

The problem with anecdotal theories is that there is no way of telling if a specific action, change in lifestyle, or treatment was the sole cause of remission or improvement, or if the improvement may have been due to other variables. Certainly no one would argue that the nine primary explanations given by Turner’s respondents are not positive lifestyle changes. (I speak as a vegetarian who practices yoga, meditation, and spirituality.) But these explanations do not add up to healing cures. This is due to the nature of respondent explanations. When seeking reasons for why something happens people will reach for the explanations they have at hand. Usually these explanations come from their cultures. Occasionally the person may have done some study or research to come up with an explanation. Very rare is the case of a specialist in the field who is familiar with the current research and discourse. But in general we take the explanations with which we are familiar. If everyone in my society believes the earth is flat I will probably echo that view too. We can call these explanations folk theories. Once he was in Brazil, after waiting in line to see the healer, Matthew shared his desire with John of God- to be healed of his brain cancer. After having his energy field read and being given a burst of healing energy, Matthew was instructed to start taking energetically infused passionflower herbs every day and to meditate daily in the main meditation room with John of God. Only about a hundred people are invited at a time to meditate in the main room, where a strong current of energy is believed to course through the room. While she admits there is no direct causal link between these foods and lowered incidence of cancer, most respondents choose the principle of erring on the side of caution and choose to eat more of the “good” foods. They also engage in brief fasts to eliminate bacterial infections, reduce cholesterol, and slow ageing.* Short fasts while doing chemo have been found to increase the efficiency of chemo treatments.*

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It became the focus of her PhD thesis at the University of California, Berkeley. Dr. Turner's research involved a year-long trip to 10 countries to interview 50 holistic healers and scores of cancer survivors about healing techniques. Since that time, she has analyzed more than 1000 cases of spontaneous remission and written a book: Radical Remission: Surviving Cancer Against All Odds. Dr. Turner prefers the term "radical remission" because typically there is nothing spontaneous about these unusual cures. Most patients were actively doing something to facilitate healing. Ten years ago, that was a question that Kelly Turner wanted an answer to, and she set out to answer it. By now, you have likely heard about the results of her research and the phenomena known as Radical Remission that is sweeping the country and world. That [instinctual] part of the brain switched on — and because this is how our brains work–the second part of brain, the frontal cortex, which can calculate and analyze, makes to-do lists, etc. – shut down. Simply because you have a societal understanding of what the word “cancer” means in the Western world, which means something to be fearful of. As soon as you hear the words “You have this fearful thing,” you will most likely, unless you’re absolutely not afraid of cancer, have your brain switch into System One, and System Two will shut down. That means you are now operating by instinct.Kelly Turner: That was the one factor that was the most embarrassing for me to have to put in my dissertation. I was embarrassed because it’s not a scientific topic. I could spin all of the other factors into a term that was somewhat acceptable by Western medicine, right? Like “social support.” I specifically use that word –“social support”– because I didn’t want to call it “being open to receiving love,” which is how my research subjects described it. Her book, Radical Remission, The Nine Key Factors That Can Make a Real Difference, is a summary of the findings from her PhD work (and beyond). It outlines the nine key factors that all of the radical remission patients had in common. She defines “radical remission” as any cancer remission that is statistically unexpected. This can occur when; Again, Dr. Kelly Turner explores the real-life application of the Radical Remission principles and the people who have chosen to take this journey.

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Kelly Turner defines radical remission as any cancer remission that is statistically unexpected (p. 6). While such cases are rare, they nevertheless deserve to be studied more. In particular Turner contends we should research the explanations given by patients who have experienced radical remission. Her PhD research, and her 2014 book, do just that. She studied more than a thousand written cases and performed over a hundred interviews. Turner takes pains to clarify she is not against conventional treatment for cancer. And she admits the reason for remission are not yet understood. They had not been previously tabulated or published. In this work she offers the nine most prominent explanations given by her respondents. She calls these nine factors hypotheses that offer clues.

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I’m not the only one who was wildly curious about whether people experiencing cures from “incurable” illnesses were doing something to improve their chances of cure. Kelly A. Turner, PhD studies people who have experienced what she calls “radical remissions.” She prefers the term “radical remission” because she says there’s nothing “spontaneous” about these remarkable cures.