by Dr.Harald Wiesendanger– Klartext
What the mainstream media is hiding
Sometimes a single word is enough to hit someone with the force of a sledgehammer. A doctor’s assessment that a cure is impossible is one such word. It is irresponsible – and all too often premature.
If a doctor told me one day that my illness was “incurable,” how would I deal with it? Would I freeze in shock? Would I fall into a deep depression? Would I give up?
Instead of despairing, I would question his statement. He says he doesn’t know of any effective treatment and that his resources are insufficient.
But what about others?
“Unfortunately, I can’t give you any hope,” he would probably reply. “The possibilities of medicine have been exhausted in your case.”
What medicine does he mean? The conventional medicine he learned during his studies? It knows 30,000 diseases, but only a third of them can be completely cured or at least alleviated. Despite ever-increasing technical and financial investment, it is reaching its limits – its limits – in treating a large number of chronic conditions that, according to expert estimates, affect around 40% of the total population – that’s around 33 million people in Germany alone.
Unhealed is not incurable
But unhealed is not incurable. What is still possible for supposedly “treatment-resistant” or even ‘untreatable’ patients is demonstrated by astonishing recovery stories in the therapy camps run by my Auswege foundation and in the practices of therapists who belong to the “Auswege” network (IVH): whether for multiple sclerosis or advanced cancer, allergies, tinnitus, metabolic disorders, epilepsy or fibromyalgia, rheumatic conditions, progressive paralysis such as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and other physical disabilities, Alzheimer’s, severe mental illnesses such as chronic depression, anxiety, and autism. And in each of the 42 “Auswege” therapy camps since 2007, it has been possible to see at close quarters how beneficial holistic, spiritual, and energetic approaches can be, especially in supposedly “hopeless” cases. We know from experience that there are no incurable diseases—only incurable patients
But is less than a cure never enough? Even with “Auswege” therapists, very few of those seeking help become completely symptom-free. However, stubborn complaints, some of which have lasted for decades, subside with surprising frequency; mental health, general well-being, and quality of life improve; medication and stressful therapies are better tolerated; and the ability and willingness to accept one’s own illness grows: as a signal, as a lesson, as a path, as an opportunity.
Is it “reasonable” for a seriously ill person to give up?
A doctor who declares me “terminally ill” usually adds: “There is nothing more I can do for you.” But even if his questionable prognosis were true, if a cure or even an improvement were impossible in my case, he would still be wrong to say so. Even for the terminally ill, for those doomed to die, a doctor can always do something – with a little empathy and a willingness to take time. It is precisely when the curative potential of all available therapies has been exhausted that some of the most demanding medical tasks begin: caring, imparting meaning, loving attention, and empathetic accompaniment until the last breath. In this respect, too, many “way out” therapists act in an exemplary manner—they make human medicine more humane.
On the other hand, how humane is a doctor who wants to force seriously ill patients to be ‘reasonable’ in his opinion? “You have to come to terms with it,” is what those affected are told; in the case of a life-threatening illness, they are even told, in a statistically precise and humanly cold manner, “how much time they have left.” Such discouraging statements, especially when coming from doctors, are irresponsible. They depress, rob people of all hope, and destroy quality of life. They often cause worse psychological damage to those affected than their illness ever could. The worst pain, the most terrible disfigurement, the most severe disability can still be easier to bear than the loss of all hope that things might one day take a turn for the better. In this way, medical prognoses ultimately become self-fulfilling prophecies, similar to the fortune teller’s vision of an accident or the chartist’s warning of “resistance” in stock price developments.
“Hope,” as the philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer once enlightened us, is “the confusion of the desire for an event with its probability” – failing to recognize that events become all the more probable the more persistently hope is directed toward them. Isn’t it better to light a candle than to merely state how dark it is? Unwavering optimism is a widely underestimated therapeutic factor that plays a decisive role in the course of an illness. Admittedly, those who fight for their health may lose. But those who do not fight have already lost.
The Munich comedian Karl Valentin is credited with the bon mot: “Predictions are always tricky – especially when they concern the future.” When a doctor gets carried away and predicts that there is no therapeutic solution for me, he fails in several ways: he discourages me. He refuses to help. And he conceals opportunities that he should know about. The phenomenon of “spontaneous remission” suggests that those who do not believe in miracles are not realists.
The statistics of “miracles”
Doctors use the term “spontaneous remission” to describe a recovery (Latin: remittere = to recover) without any apparent external cause, especially without any recognized therapy having taken place – in other words, by itself. (The Latin word sponte literally means “of one’s own accord,” “from within.”) Although documented by doctors for over a century (1), spontaneous remissions were a taboo subject in medicine until recently: because prevailing doctrine could not explain them, they were simply dismissed as phantoms, as the product of dubious sensational reports, and attributed to misjudgments by patients or diagnostic errors by the treating physicians.
A change of heart among experts only began in 1974 with the first scientific conference on spontaneous healing in cancer in Baltimore, USA. Since then, larger research projects have taken up the phenomenon. They unanimously concluded that among the vast number of reported spontaneous healings, there is indeed a hard core whose authenticity and credibility are beyond reasonable doubt.
Pioneering work was done by American biochemist Caryle Hirshberg from the Institute of Noetic Sciences in California: Together with her colleague Brendan O’Regan, who died shortly afterwards from malignant melanoma, a form of skin cancer, she combed through almost the entire medical literature of the previous 120 years in search of medically inexplicable healings. She came across around 4,000 cases from 20 countries, including 1,051 spontaneous remissions of cancer. (2) (She presented fifty particularly convincing cases in her book “Unexpected Recoveries.”) (3) When the German Cancer Society invited guests to a highly acclaimed symposium on “Spontaneous Remissions in Cancer” in Heidelberg in April 1997, Caryle Hirshberg was one of the star guests.
At the same event, a German research group led by Professor Walter Gallmeier and senior physician Herbert Kappauf attracted attention. Since 1990, they had been researching unexpected cures in cancer patients at the Nuremberg Clinic. (4) “Our most important concern is to show that these phenomena are real,” explained Kappauf. From his impressive collection of cases, he presented 20 well-documented examples for which conventional medicine offered no plausible explanation.
However, according to the tenor of the Heidelberg symposium, it is futile for those affected to hope for spontaneous healing. This is because such remission occurs in at most one in 60,000 to 100,000 cancer patients. That would be just 0.001 percent.
Don’t be discouraged by percentages
Such statistics are devastating for those seeking help: Don’t they mean that among tens of thousands of tumor patients who are seriously ill and have been given up by doctors and are placing their last hope in “alternative” healing methods, only one will not be disappointed in the end? If, for example, all 340,000 Germans who are newly diagnosed with cancer each year were to seek out a healer, would only three or four of them find effective help? And isn’t it to be feared that the success rates of “alternative” therapists for other diseases would be hardly any better once they are examined with scientific rigor?
Patients cannot be warned strongly enough not to let themselves be discouraged by this. The data available to pessimists is no better than that available to optimists. Yes, you can usually count the number of convincing reports of spontaneous remissions that appear in the most important medical journals each year on the fingers of both hands. But how many puzzling remissions remain unpublished—perhaps because the treating physician did not document them, because he could not find an editorial office that wanted his report, because he did not have the time to evaluate and publish it, or because the patient recovered outside of medical supervision and attention?
Patients should question the standards applied above all: to what extent are they useful as decision-making aids? Doctors only recognize a cure as “spontaneous” if it is confirmed by a current diagnosis and occurred within a period of time during which no therapeutic measures were taken that could be effective according to current medical knowledge. Research needs such criteria to isolate “pure” cases – but does the patient need them? They are unrealistically strict for the patient to form an opinion: for the majority of those who seek help from spiritual healers, the last medical examination was months, if not years, ago. And, sensibly, hardly any of them reject any other therapeutic options while undergoing spiritual treatment. Spontaneous remission research to date resembles a fisherman who catches hardly anything: not because, as he believes, there are too few fish, but because he is dragging nets with the wrong mesh size through the sea.
Do only “miracles” deserve recognition?
Medical research into the “miracle” healings of Lourdes is in a similar state. Experts estimate that between 30,000 and 60,000 sick people are among the three to four million pilgrims who visit the famous Marian shrine at the foot of the French Pyrenees every year. In comparison, the number of around 70 “miraculous healings” that have been officially approved by the Church after thorough examination by an international committee of thirty doctors seems ridiculously low. To be recognized, a case must meet the strictest requirements, which were laid down in a canon in 1734 by Cardinal Lambertini, later Pope Benedict XIV: The healing must have been sudden, unpredictable, complete, and without relapse; the suffering must have been life-threatening and of organic origin; it must be possible to completely rule out that it was not medical treatment that led to the success. The healing must “surpass the powers of nature, represent a reversal of the laws of nature, and be scientifically inexplicable.”
Sick pilgrims rightly base their hopes on other figures and criteria: in the history of Lourdes, more than 6,000 healings have been reported to the local Bureau Medical and registered there. The fact that they were ultimately denied recognition does not necessarily speak against their credibility. After all, why should a “miracle” not occur slowly, only partially, in cases of suffering with no discernible organic cause and accompanied by relapses? Why should it be inappropriate to speak of a “miracle” even when a life is not in acute danger? Why, believers wonder, should spontaneous remissions not be based on comprehensible biological processes and follow the laws of nature? Does God’s power only prove itself in violations of the world order he created? Many sick people do not even report a positive change in Lourdes, especially if it only becomes apparent some time after their return, which is usually the case. This may be out of convenience, out of discouragement due to the strict medical examination criteria, or because of the (possibly erroneous) belief that a previous or accompanying therapy brought about the improvement.
As long as medical research cannot come up with more useful decision-making aids, patients are better off turning to other patients: to personal impressions and experiences that those affected have gathered themselves after trying “alternative” medicine. These can be found, for example, among the thousands of people seeking help whom the Auswege foundation has referred to experienced, reputable therapists or invited to its therapy camps since its founding in 2005. “I don’t know if I’ll get well again,” one camp participant told us as he said goodbye. “But I finally know again that I have a chance.” With the force of the hammer that came down on him with his doctor’s “incurable” prognosis, he tears down the wall of hopelessness.
“Hope dies last,” they say – and rightly so. Remaining confident and maintaining faith in recovery is crucial in helping seriously ill people to endure their suffering. This preserves their last shred of quality of life. Hope may ultimately prove to be an illusion. But does it have to be destroyed by conventional medicine before that happens? “We must distinguish between suffering and despair,” wrote Austrian psychiatrist Viktor Frankl. “A suffering may be incurable, but the patient only despairs when he can no longer see any meaning in his suffering.”
This article is a revised version of a chapter from the book by Harald Wiesendanger: Auswege – Kranken anders helfen(2015).
Notes
(1) As early as 1918, Rohdenburg described 185 observed spontaneous remissions (“Fluctuations in the growth energy of tumors in man, with especial reference to spontaneous recession,” Journal of Cancer Research 3/1918, pp. 193-225); Fauvet reported on 202 cases between 1960 and 1964 (“Spontaneous cancer cures and regressions,” Revue du Practicien 14/1964, pp. 2177–2180); Boyd presented over 98 cases in 1966 (The spontaneous regression of cancer, Springfield Ill. 1966); Cole and Everson report 176 cases between 1900 and 1960 (W.H. Cole: “Spontaneous regression of cancer and the importance of finding its cause,” National Cancer Institute Monographs 44/1976, pp. 5-9; W.H. Cole/T.C. Everson: Spontaneous Regression of Cancer, Philadelphia, PA. 1966; “Spontaneous Regression of Cancer: Preliminary Report,” Annals of Surgery 144/1956, pp. 366–380); Challis presented 489 cases from 1900 to 1987 (“The spontaneous regression of cancer. A review of cases from 1900 to 1987,” Acta Oncologica 29/1990, pp. 545–550).
(2) Brendan O’Regan/Caryle Hirshberg: Spontaneous Remission – An Annotated Bibliography, Institute of Noetic Sciences, Sausalito 1993; in this publication, they report on 1,385 cases of spontaneous remission from cancer between 1900 and 1987.
(3) Caryle Hirshberg/Marc Ian Barasch: Unerwartete Genesung – Die Kraft zur Heilung kommt aus uns selbst (Unexpected Recovery – The Power to Heal Comes from Within), Munich 1995.
(4) Walter Gallmeier and Herbert Kappauf published preliminary results in 1995 in their book Nach der Diagnose Krebs – Leben ist eine Alternative (After a Cancer Diagnosis – Life is an Alternative), Freiburg 1995; see also Herbert Kappauf: Wonders Are Possible: Spontaneous Healing in Cancer. Freiburg, 2003; Manfred E. Heim/Reinhold Schwarz (eds.): Spontaneous Remissions in Oncology, Stuttgart, 1998.