A medical doctor and Harvard faculty member explores commonalities among cases of those rare medical "miracles"—terminal patients who find themselves suddenly healed after experiments with alternative medicine or lifestyle changes.
This compelling book is the result of 17 years spent tracking these people down and verifying their stories ... To anyone familiar with health trends, these lessons will not be surprising. They include diet, exercise, stress reduction, social interaction, love, faith and finding your 'true self.' But beyond this, the book is a sharp critique of Western medicine: its blind spots, its resistance to change and its very structure. Rediger proposes a sweeping overhaul of the practice of medicine, and he makes a darned good case for it. The history he recounts, the clinical trials he cites, the personal stories of people with real names lend his argument the force of a hurricane. When I finished the book, I ordered copies for friends and changed my grocery list ... As a messenger, Rediger has the right credentials...and his compassion permeates the pages of this book ... It’s an utterly persuasive message.
Dr. Rediger is at his best when he voices the reasons we should be skeptical about outrageous scientific claims, and when he reviews some of the fascinating history of medical advances ... He is truly gifted with analogies ... Dr. Rediger never grapples with the statistics of medical prognoses ... by definition, there are so few cases in the tails. Misapplying these statistics leads the uncareful to draw all kinds of unwarranted conclusions. Equally worrying, he utterly ignores half of the statistical question that could shed some light on all of this ... For the sake of giving Dr. Rediger the benefit of the doubt, I suspended disbelief and allowed myself to drink the medicine of his woo-woo thinking for the first 280 pages of the book. But now, thankfully, I am cured.
Here, Rediger adds to spontaneous healing research by presenting case studies of terminal patients, and includes engaging lessons about pathophysiology and the history of medicine. By using analogies that enhance understanding for non-clinicians, readers learn about more than just patients experiencing illness. As a leading voice challenging current healthcare systems and treatment models, Rediger makes a convincing case to study spontaneous remissions ... Readers with an interest in holistic medicine as well as open-minded health care providers who are willing to adopt new treatment models that focus on treating the root causes of illness will benefit most from Rediger's call to treat more than just symptoms.
