Righting a Wrong Turn
221
predict that regrowth in any part of the body, as long as it was near the
primary tumor, would have the same effect. The key to regression ap-
pears to be a change in the malignancy's immediate neighborhood. The
electrical currents in nerve and particularly in the neuroepidermal junc-
tion seem likely candidates, since they suffice to start regeneration in
animals normally incapable of it.
ROSE'S EXPERIMENT CONFIRMED
There's abundant evidence that the state of the entire nervous system
can affect cancer. Back in 1927 Elida Evans, a student of Carl Jung,
documented a link between depression and cancer in a study almost
totally neglected in the intervening years. In a long-term project begun
in 1946 by Dr. Caroline Bedell Thomas at Johns Hopkins School of
Medicine, students were given personality tests, and the occurrence of
disease among them was charted over several decades. In this and later
studies, a high risk of developing cancer has been correlated with a spe-
cific psychological profile that includes a poor relationship with parents,
self-pity, self-deprecation, passivity, a compulsive need to please, and
above all an inability to rise from depres'sion after some traumatic event
such as the death of a loved one or loss of a job. In such a person, cancer
typically follows the loss in a year or two.
Several physicians have found they can greatly increase cancer patients'
chances of a cure with biofeedback, meditation, hypnosis, or visualiza-
tion techniques. Several years ago O. Carl Simonton, an oncologist, and