Radical Remission

Big disappointment

I had high hopes for this book, but I was very disappointed. I have read several books on alternative cancer approaches, and this was the least helpful of them all so far.

The author’s stated goal was great. And the 9 principles she comes up with are a helpful list. The problem comes with the details provided beyond that. Either she is so blind to her own bias that she is unaware of what she is doing or she intentionally edits stories so that they map better to her own bias. This book is more about the author’s beliefs than it is an analytical review of the facts.

To cut to the chase. A better title for the detailed content of this book would be, “A New Age Eastern Mysticism Approach to Cancer.” Although several of her cancer patients are Christian, she skims over or ignores their faith stories. But she spends endless pages on eastern mysticism and healers. I think she spends more time quoting what mystical “healers” have told her than she does what cancer survivors have told her.

She takes time to mention the books her survivors have written, as long as they track with eastern mysticism, and then avoids mentioning the much more popular books by the survivors who are either Christian, or focus on alternative, but less spiritually focused approaches.

I already knew about some of the cancer survivors covered in this book. At least two have their own websites and very popular books. But when their stories are covered here, the main things that they would say helped their cancer were, at best, very very vaguely covered. You would miss the most important things if you did not go on to read their full stories, and again their books and their current work, were not even mentioned.

So if you want to spend time reading about fortune tellers, light auras that only special mystical people can see, people who channel different gods and have different personalities when they do, and the teachings of mystical faith healers in Hawaii, this is the book for you. The author is obviously in love with anything mystical. The author also seems to have a very very poor understanding of Christian spirituality or Christian teaching or practices.

The premise of the book is that the author was looking across many different radical remissions and sifting out the things that were in common. Knowing some of the stories supposedly covered, I can tell you that this book does not do that. The authors bias is more of a character than any of the people she covers. So instead the book covers the most helpful items so vaguely as to not be helpful. Then it covers the most mystical items in so much detail you will think those are the most important.

There are still helpful things in this book. Like the mindfulness stress reduction, general guidance on diet and supplements, cautions about just trusting your oncologist and jumping into chemo, and more. But there are better books on all these topics.

So this book is not worthless to read, but it has been the very least helpful of the four I’ve read so far. A book that actually did what this book said it was going to do, would be great. Hopefully someone will write it.