"A splendid history of mind-body medicine...a book that desperately needed to be written." —Jerome Groopman, New York Times Is stress a deadly disease on the rise in modern society? Can mind-body practices from the East help us become well? When it comes to healing, we believe we must look beyond doctors and drugs; we must look within ourselves. Faith, relationships, and attitude matter. But why do we believe such things? From psychoanalysis to the placebo effect to meditation, this vibrant cultural history describes mind-body healing as rooted in a patchwork of stories, allowing us to make new sense of our suffering and to rationalize new treatments and lifestyles.

Cancer. There are few words in the English language having such a visceral, personal impact. Cancer patient. Cancer survivor. Pretty much anyone over the age of 30 knows one. A family member. A friend. Someone lost too soon. Someone forever changed. But we don't really like to talk about it, because there's really not much we can do. We fight cancer, sure, but we rarely win. Defeating cancer is one of medical science's greatest challenges. So when a novel approach to treatment seems promising, there is an intense interest in its progress and those who are making it. This book is about both - the progress and the pioneers - and its focus is the revolutionary science of something called cancer immunotherapy. This medical marvel, cancer immunotherapy - also called immuno-oncology - is still in its infancy. Yet, mobilizing the immune system to recognize and attack cancer has long been imagined, and occasionally attempted, for more than 100 years: It is only just recently that significant - in fact, unprecedented - progress has been made. With the use of newly approved immunotherapy treatments, there are now reports of hundreds, if not thousands of cancer patients with advanced disease living years beyond all prior expectation. Some of these once-terminally ill patients are now called "cured." This has never happened before. As Dr. Jill O'Donnell-Tormey comments in the Foreword, "It has taken decades of basic research and billions of dollars of investment to build the foundation upon which today's lifesaving treatments are based. This book offers a uniquely entertaining yet inspiring glimpse into the lives and minds of the academic and industry pioneers who forged this new field. It is a story of how an obscure and oft-derided field of cancer research - and the tenacious few scientists who refused to abandon it - came from behind to become the new 'darling of oncology.'" The book's author, Neil Canavan, is an experienced commentator on new developments in medical science. His portraits of 25 of the pioneers in immunotherapy are the culmination of two years of travel to laboratories, offices, and conferences around the world and countless hours of conversation with individuals immersed in a vitally important, promising assault on a dread disease that kills more than eight million people each year worldwide. -- from dust jacket.

A timely, authoritative, and entertaining history of medicine in America by an eminent physician Despite all that has been written and said about American medicine, narrative accounts of its history are uncommon. Until Ira Rutkow’s Seeking the Cure, there have been no modern works, either for the lay reader or the physician, that convey the extraordinary story of medicine in the United States. Yet for more than three centuries, the flowering of medicine—its triumphal progress from ignorance to science—has proven crucial to Americans’ under-standing of their country and themselves. Seeking the Cure tells the tale of American medicine with a series of little-known anecdotes that bring to life the grand and unceasing struggle by physicians to shed unsound, if venerated, beliefs and practices and adopt new medicines and treatments, often in the face of controversy and scorn. Rutkow expertly weaves the stories of individual doctors—what they believed and how they practiced—with the economic, political, and social issues facing the nation. Among the book’s many historical personages are Cotton Mather, Benjamin Franklin, George Washington (whose timely adoption of a controversial medical practice probably saved the Continental Army), Benjamin Rush, James Garfield (who was killed by his doctors, not by an assassin’s bullet), and Joseph Lister. The book touches such diverse topics as smallpox and the Revolutionary War, the establishment of the first medical schools, medicine during the Civil War, railroad medicine and the beginnings of specialization, the rise of the medical-industrial complex, and the thrilling yet costly advent of modern disease-curing technologies utterly unimaginable a generation ago, such as gene therapies, body scanners, and robotic surgeries. In our time of spirited national debate over the future of American health care amid a seemingly infinite flow of new medical discoveries and pharmaceutical products, Rutkow’s account provides readers with an essential historic, social, and even philosophical context. Working in the grand American literary tradition established by such eminent writer-doctors as Oliver Wendell Holmes, William Carlos Williams, Sherwin Nuland, and Oliver Sacks, he combines the historian’s perspective with the physician’s seasoned expertise. Capacious, learned, and gracefully told, Seeking the Cure will satisfy armchair historians and doctors alike, for, as Rutkow shows, the history of American medicine is a portrait of America itself.

Never before have two revolutions with so much potential to save and prolong human life occurred simultaneously. The converging, synergistic power of the biochemical and digital revolutions now allows us to read every letter of life's code, create precisely targeted drugs to control it, and tailor their use to individual patients. Cancer, diabetes, Alzheimer's and countless other killers can be vanquished -- if we make full use of the tools of modern drug design and allow doctors the use of modern data gathering and analytical tools when prescribing drugs to their patients. But Washington stands in the way, clinging to outdated drug-approval protocols developed decades ago during medicine's long battle with the infectious epidemics of the past. Peter Huber, an expert in science, technology, and public policy, demonstrates why Washington's one-size-fits-all drug policies can't deal with diseases rooted in the complex molecular diversity of human bodies. Washington is ill-equipped to handle the torrents of data that now propel the advance of molecular medicine and is reluctant to embrace the statistical methods of the digital age that can. Obsolete economic policies, often rationalized as cost-saving measures, stifle innovation and suppress investment in the medicine that can provide the best cures at the lowest cost. In the 1980s, an AIDS diagnosis was a death sentence, until the FDA loosened its throttling grip and began streamlining and accelerating approval of life-saving drugs. The Cure in the Code shows patients, doctors, investors, and policy makers what we must now do to capture the full life-saving and cost-saving potential of the revolution in molecular medicine. America has to choose. At stake for America is the power to lead the world in mastering the most free, fecund, competitive, dynamic, and intelligent natural resource on the planet -- the molecular code that spawns human life and controls our health.

Before the Blight, becoming an adult was something teenagers looked forward to. But now, turning eighteen means certain death. Unless you prove yourself worthy of the Cure. On her seventeenth birthday, Ashen Spencer is blindfolded and escorted to the massive, mysterious building known as the Arc to begin her year of training and testing in hopes that she can earn the Cure-a powerful drug given only to those deemed worthy to survive beyond their eighteenth birthday. Ashen has a chance to rise up from her former life of squalor and be granted a place in society, if the Panel-the mysterious group of powerful men and women in charge of the Arc-deems her year a success. She's assigned to work for twelve months as a servant for a wealthy family whose son is the most alluring young man she's ever met. At first, Ashen is grateful for the opportunity to earn her place in a society she's always dreamed of inhabiting. But as time passes and she begins to learn the truth about the people she admires so much and the home she left behind, she realizes she has a choice: Be part of the disease...Or be part of the Cure. For readers of The Hunger Games, Divergent, and the Selection.

A rigorous, sceptical, deeply reported look at the new science behind the mind's extraordinary ability to heal the body. Have you ever felt a surge of adrenaline after narrowly avoiding an accident? Salivated at the sight (or thought) of a sour lemon? Felt turned on just from hearing your partner's voice? If so, then you've experienced how dramatically the workings of your mind can affect your body. Yet while we accept that stress or anxiety can damage our health, the idea of 'healing thoughts' was long ago hijacked by New Age gurus and spiritual healers. Recently, however, serious scientists from a range of fields have been uncovering evidence that our thoughts, emotions, and beliefs can ease pain, heal wounds, fend off infection and heart disease, even slow the progression of AIDS and some cancers. In Cure, award-winning science writer Jo Marchant travels the world to meet the physicians, patients and researchers on the cutting edge of this new world of medicine. We learn how meditation protects against depression and dementia, how social connections increase life expectancy, and how patients who feel cared for recover from surgery faster. We meet Iraq war veterans who are using a virtual arctic world to treat their burns and children whose ADHD is kept under control with half the normal dose of medication. We watch as a transplant patient uses the smell of lavender to calm his hostile immune system and an Olympic runner shaves vital seconds off his time through mind-power alone. Drawing on the very latest research, Marchant explores the vast potential of the mind's ability to heal, acknowledges its limitations, and explains how we can make use of the findings in our own lives. ‘A thought-provoking exploration of how the mind affects the body and can be harnessed to help treat physical illness, by an award-winning science journalist.’ Best Books of 2016, Australian Financial Review ‘A thought-provoking exploration.’ Best Books of 2016, Economist

LOS ANGELES TIMES AND PUBLISHERS WEEKLY BESTSELLER • The powerful memoir of a young doctor and former college athlete diagnosed with a rare disease who spearheaded the search for a cure—and became a champion for a new approach to medical research. “A wonderful and moving chronicle of a doctor’s relentless pursuit, this book serves both patients and physicians in demystifying the science that lies behind medicine.”—Siddhartha Mukherjee, New York Times bestselling author of The Emperor of All Maladies and The Gene David Fajgenbaum, a former Georgetown quarterback, was nicknamed the Beast in medical school, where he was also known for his unmatched mental stamina. But things changed dramatically when he began suffering from inexplicable fatigue. In a matter of weeks, his organs were failing and he was read his last rites. Doctors were baffled by his condition, which they had yet to even diagnose. Floating in and out of consciousness, Fajgenbaum prayed for a second chance, the equivalent of a dramatic play to second the game into overtime. Miraculously, Fajgenbaum survived—only to endure repeated near-death relapses from what would eventually be identified as a form of Castleman disease, an extremely deadly and rare condition that acts like a cross between cancer and an autoimmune disorder. When he relapsed while on the only drug in development and realized that the medical community was unlikely to make progress in time to save his life, Fajgenbaum turned his desperate hope for a cure into concrete action: Between hospitalizations he studied his own charts and tested his own blood samples, looking for clues that could unlock a new treatment. With the help of family, friends, and mentors, he also reached out to other Castleman disease patients and physicians, and eventually came up with an ambitious plan to crowdsource the most promising research questions and recruit world-class researchers to tackle them. Instead of waiting for the scientific stars to align, he would attempt to align them himself. More than five years later and now married to his college sweetheart, Fajgenbaum has seen his hard work pay off: A treatment he identified has induced a tentative remission and his novel approach to collaborative scientific inquiry has become a blueprint for advancing rare disease research. His incredible story demonstrates the potency of hope, and what can happen when the forces of determination, love, family, faith, and serendipity collide. Praise for Chasing My Cure “A page-turning chronicle of living, nearly dying, and discovering what it really means to be invincible in hope.”—Angela Duckworth, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Grit “[A] remarkable memoir . . . Fajgenbaum writes lucidly and movingly . . . Fajgenbaum’s stirring account of his illness will inspire readers.”—Publishers Weekly

Faith, its a word that describes a belief in something that you cant truly know exists. Faith is someone standing in front of a closet telling you that there is gold inside and that you will get that gold at some point if you can just trust that it is there. Whats to stop you from looking in the closet? So many people believe that there is gold in the closet, so maybe you should too. The feeling of the possibility of getting the gold is so intense, it is just enough to make it so you dont try and peek inside the closet. The funny thing about faith is that without numbers, it wouldnt exist. Yet, your faith belongs to you; you own it in the most complete sense. It is you that owns this faith and it is you that decides what to make of it. People get mad when something makes them question their faith, yet the only one that can question your faith is you. No man, woman, movie or book can influence the decision you have to keep or discard your faith. In the end, you are the one who decides the direction of your life. This book provides a peak into the closet. It gives you the choice to either believe that you do see the gold, or to believe that there is no gold. What you decide to see and believe is ultimately up to you. This book will help you understand why there is no gold, but instead a much more magical entity. The closet in reality isnt a box but is an unending future.

"Sweet Spot." Ever swung a baseball bat or paddled a Ping-Pong ball? If so, you know the oh-so-nice feel of the sweet spot. Life in the sweet spot rolls like the downhill side of a downwind bike ride. But you don't have to swing a bat or a club to know this. What engineers give sports equipment, God gave you. A zone, a region, a life precinct in which you were made to dwell. He tailored the curves of your life to fit an empty space in his jigsaw puzzle. And life makes sweet sense when you find your spot. But if you're like 70 percent of working adults, you haven't found it. You don't find meaning in your work, or you don't believe your talents are used. What can you do? You're suffering from the common life, and you desperately need a cure. Best-selling author Max Lucado has found it. In Cure for the Common Life, he offers practical tools for exploring and identifying your own uniqueness, motivation to put your strengths to work, and the perfect prescription for finding and living in your sweet spot for the rest of your life.

How distress, disorder, and disease are formed and ways to reverse themAre you or a loved one suffering from a chronic illness at spirit or body or mind level? Since the release of the book in July 2017, more than 1000 people have reversed their sufferings through the book. There is online free support available on Facebook where Author and community of trained people help you realize the Cure faster.Have you been told that there is no way out? If so, they are absolutely right. There is no solution to our suffering either above in the sky or outside in science and technology. It lies within each one of us. Our problem is not a big problem as much as our ignorance about the existence of the solution. We do not know a clear structured way to turn inward. Any form of suffering is just a symptom at one level or more. The Cure is only one- turn inward. Whether it is distress due to trauma, abuse of the childhood or it is due to relationship, career or an inner void. Or a disease ranging from diabetes, BP, PCOD, infertility, thyroid to fatal cases like cancer. It could also be mental disorder ranging from sleep, anger, anxiety, depression to schizophrenia and dementia or anything else making you feel like a victim to your biology, destiny or circumstances. Here is a book with three techniques, so profoundly simple, and yet extremely powerful, that can allow you to awaken your innate healing capabilities. What does this mean? It means that as you practice the three techniques, it restores your health and well-being. Regardless of the kind of suffering you or your loved one has. This book comes to you after seven years of research, meditation and working on thousands of cases with an extensive range of symptoms with which our modern urban humanity is suffering. It reveals the code of your suffering and unfolds the science of cure through three techniques developed around breathing. It is based on the principles of quantum physics and that of ancient wisdom to awaken the life force energy thus restoring your breath, sexuality, and sleep. An ingenious marriage of science and ancient wisdom is an effortless way to awaken your health, a real breakthrough in the world today. This awakening triggers the innate healing within us to restore the spirit-body-mind balance. This has been the experience of people who have attended the workshop. Each one of them could restore well-being within three to six weeks after the workshop. This is the first time a book is written based on a proven record of being effective and working for all kind of cases. The book is engaging, intimate and clearly written, which makes the techniques it introduces easy to learn and put into practice. The book explains the science of meditation and establishes why and how Meditation is "The Cure".