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Prayer's Place in Treatment

— 'Dr. Hope' credits his remission, in part, to tens of thousands of strangers

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This story is from the Anamnesis episode called Heal Thyself and starts at 25:50 in the podcast. It's from Gary Onik, MD, an adjunct professor of Mechanical Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University.

In October of 2018, I developed pain in my left hip and I suddenly couldn't urinate. I wasn't really surprised when my PSA test revealed a value of 137 and my CT scans confirmed I had terminal metastatic prostate cancer. My gland had a tumor the size of an orange and I had a separate mass in my pelvis that was so large it was compressing my bladder. There were cancer deposits throughout my spine and a metastatic lesion in my left femoral neck accounting for my intractable hip pain.

There is only one treatment for metastatic prostate cancer, castration, either chemical or surgical. It is not curative. Eventually, your cancer mutates, becomes castrate-resistant, and death follows after a course or two of futile chemotherapy.

Dying With Dignity?

The side effects of depriving a man of his male hormones are pretty obnoxious as you might expect. Your sex life is essentially over while you experience the male equivalent of menopause, complete with emotional swings and breast tenderness. Castration also leaves many patients as physical wrecks. It increases the risk of Alzheimer's disease, heart disease, diabetes, loss of muscle mass, and fatigue.

I have a strong faith and I've had a wonderful purpose-filled life, rich with accomplishments, family, and lifelong friends. I decided that castration wasn't for me. If I couldn't find other less debilitating treatments, I would do my best to die with dignity.

I did, however, have what I believed were two good treatment paths to pursue. The first one, open to anybody with faith, is prayer. I have personally witnessed this through a patient I had 10 years ago who had an unresectable liver tumor. There were no curative options for him, just palliative chemotherapy. This patient rejected chemotherapy. Instead, his church created a prayer chain that extended around the world. With prayer as his only treatment, his tumor shrank. He was alive and disease-free 5 years later.

This experience prompted my study of prayer, however one defines it, and the healing capabilities of the human consciousness. It is beyond the scope of this talk, but suffice it to say there is very solid scientific evidence that supports this concept. Emerging out of academic programs such as Stanford and Princeton, it has been shown that our consciousness, working at the quantum level, can impact the macro world. There is now an emerging field of quantum medicine.

Tens of Thousands of People on My Side

I embarked on trying to harness prayer for my healing. Since I don't belong to a church or temple, I set out to tap into this healing resource by creating a video asking for peoples' prayers. My plea was to all religions and denominations. I was convinced it didn't matter if the prayers were from Jews, Muslims, Christians, Buddhists, Hindus, or even intentions put out there by secular agnostics. I wholeheartedly believed that they could all have a positive effect for me. Tens of thousands of people around the world eventually prayed for me.

The second path, which I pursued, was somewhat more unusual since I was the only patient in the world to whom it was available, and I was the only doctor in the world who could perform it. Once I committed to this course, many resources were made manifest by my friends and classmates of the Harvard Class of '74. I have spent most of my career pursuing an immunological treatment for cancer and their contributions turned out to be truly providential.

Six years before my diagnosis, my Harvard roommate, Jim, and his wife, Carol, and I developed an innovative way to create a cancer vaccine while the cancer was still in the patient's body. If successful, it could potentially be a major clinical advance helping innumerable cancer patients.

We contacted my fellow classmate, Malcolm Friedman, who joined the project, helping with the experimental work and getting us back together with another class member Jeff Sagansky, a very successful business man and former CEO of Sony Pictures. Jeff provided funding and business expertise, which gave the project the chance for success that it would not have had otherwise.

I started treating patients with metastatic prostate cancer using the technology more than 5 years ago. The very first patient I treated had just weeks to live and was scheduled for hospice. He had been treated with all the conventional therapies and had finally run out of options. Besides cancer in other parts of his body, he had a large tumor mass growing into his bladder that placed him in the hospital every few weeks for transfusions. The mass had also obstructed his kidneys and bladder, which had to be drained by catheters.

He was a very sophisticated patient whose son was in the medical industry. When I offered them this never-before-tried option, they jumped at the chance. I treated him with our vaccine. It is now 6 years later and he is still cancer-free, and is living a fully functional life.

You see, I actually had an excellent alternative to castration, but now I face the big challenge. Since I was the only person in the world who knew how to perform the procedure, how was I to heal myself?

A Medical Miracle

I approached an old friend of mine and yet another Harvard classmate, urologist, David Vaughan. We had worked extensively together on another pioneering breakthrough, the male lumpectomy, a focal treatment for localized prostate cancer.

I explained to David that I would have a spinal anesthesia and while I was awake I could walk him through the procedure. He just had to follow my directions to successfully treat me. His first response can be summed up as, "Are you out of your mind?"

I eventually convinced David to help and on December 3rd 2018 we both performed the procedure. He did his part with skill and good humor while I did mine in the stirrups. How did it turn out? When I gathered my three children in Pittsburgh to tell them of my diagnosis and how I was going to handle my treatment, I got a response from each that typifies their individuality.

Casey, himself a physician said, "Geez, Dad. You can't even die in the usual way." Emily, my daughter, burst into tears and Allan, who is on the autistic spectrum, said in his characteristically flat way, "Dad, I am crushed." I turned to Al, "There is no reason to be crushed Al because we know how this is going to turn out." I had the faith that as God had allowed me to cure my first patient to let me know that I had a purpose to fulfill, I would be cured to keep the work going and allow me to tell you this story.

By 2 weeks after my treatment, my hip pain resolved. By 4 weeks, I no longer needed a catheter to urinate. By 6 weeks, my PSA had dropped from 137 to 0.4. I am blessed to report that with thousands praying for me and what I feel was a God-inspired, new cancer treatment I am now cancer-free.

If you would like to view the full story of my treatment, you can see the two-part video on YouTube. It's titled "AKA Dr. Hope." Just as I believe I have been given a mission to accomplish, I enlisted the aid of my classmates by appealing to their sense of purpose. It went something like this, "We are all highly successful and accomplished in our own right, and we are clearly coming to the end of our careers. How many individuals get to do something so significant such as cure cancer so late in life? Who can say that all the experience that we've had up until this point wasn't meant to prepare us for this grand purpose?"

I had thrown down an irresistible gauntlet, and it was taken up by my Harvard '74 friends with enthusiasm. This last June we at the virtual meeting of the American Association of Cancer Research, which showed that we can generate a complete remission of metastatic prostate cancer in 40% of patients and that other tumors, such as pancreatic cancer, could also respond.

The significance of this paper was lost in the COVID-19 frenzy. FDA trials are now just beginning and we have an enormous amount of work to do before we can bring this treatment to large numbers of patients.

Today, thanks to prayer from thousands of people I will never meet, thanks to the grace of those I did meet in the class of Harvard '74, and thanks to the many others who have supported me in so many ways, I believe I will live to see this treatment become a gift to cancer patients around the globe as it has been a "physician, heal thyself" gift to me.

Other stories from the Heal Thyself episode include "Researcher Turned COVID Long-Hauler" and "I'm a Neurologist With Alzheimer's."

Want to share your story? Read the Anamnesis Storyteller Tip Sheet and when you're ready, apply here!