I’ll Tell You the Secret of Cancer

Hard-hitting piece, tho not a cancer survivor myself my father is. As his ambassador of sorts to the rest of my extended family I recognize the unsolicited opinion tsunami the author describes.

However, the part that really caught my eye was the reference to David Spiegel and positive mindset research (or lack thereof). By pure coincidence, I had recently come across the self hypnosis topic via the Huberman Lab medical podcast. One app mentioned was Reveri, created by David Spiegel’s lab. I looked up the science references in the “about” section and found a 1983 and a 2000 paper reference. Seems a bit flimsy to me, but am wondering if there are not any more noteworthy publications to cite over the last ~40 years?

This came up via Pocket a few days ago for me.

My son has cancer, and we have been immensely glad that we cut off Facebook, etc. years ago because the amount of “advice” we have gotten has been exhausting even without it.

Another thing that the author doesn’t touch on but has been a constant issue for us is: what did we do to cause/deserve this. The secret there is: likely nothing you had control over. Could you have intercepted the factor that made the cell mutation happen? Possibly, but it was likely innocuous and nothing that you would have known.

Nevertheless, the self doubt, questioning, and guilt remain.