Choices in Healing

This text is designed for the cancer patient or health professional who seeks an overview of the available choices, both in treatments and in living with cancer. It offers guidance for the whole life cycle of cancer - from the initial shock of diagnosis to decisions about choosing a physician and conventional therapies, selecting complementary therapies, coping with treatment and living fully with the possibility of recurrence. The book explains and evaluates a wide range of complementary therapy programmes, including spiritual and psychological approaches, nutritional therapies, physical therapies, pharmacological therapies and traditional medicines from around the world.

There are also sections on prayer and spiritual healing; psychotherapy, support groups, visual imagery and hypnosis; massage, therapeutic touch, yoga and Qi Gong; macrobiotic diet and other cancer diets; acupuncture and Chinese herbal medicines; and numerous other unconventional therapies used by US cancer patients. The author describes his conclusions after more than a decade of study of unconventional cancer treatments in North America, Europe, India and Japan. He also draws extensively on his work with hundreds of cancer patients from the Commonweal Cancer Help Programmes, the residential support programme depicted by Bill Moyers in the 1993 PBS documentary, "Healing and the Mind".

From 1988 to 1990, Michael Lerner served as Special Consultant to the US Congress Office of Technology Assessment for its landmark study "Unconventional Cancer Treatment". In 1983, he received a MacArthur Prize Fellowship for his work in public health. He is the founder and president of Commonweal, a health and environmental research institute.