On 3/2/07, Liz Hawkins wrote:

Dear Dr Benor
We are teaching healing within the Complementary Therapies degree programme
at University of Westminster in London. Recently a during a discussion a
student queried whether it was safe to give patients with cancer spiritual
healing. They were considering the research carried out on plants/ seedlings
where healing caused growth and assuming that the same could happen with
tumours. I have worked with many cancer patients and used spiritual healing
with the view that reducing stress would enhance immune system functioning.
I wondered if you had any views on this or if there has been any research
published that demonstrates tumour growth - or shrinkage - following
spiritual healing.
Many thanks

Liz

Liz Hawkins
Course Leader
BSc(Hons)Health Sciences:Complementary Therapies

Dear Liz,

Healing seems to work as needed and as focused by the intent of the healer.

There is some research on cancers in mice showing positive effects for the
mice.

I know of no evidence to suggest that healing would help the cancer to grow
rather than the person to be healed. However, ?healing may mean healing
into death.

Blessings

Dan

Afterthoughts ? from V3 of Healing Research:

Western society is strongly death-avoiding and death-denying.

Men do not care how nobly they live, but only how long, although it is
within the reach of every man to live nobly, but within no man's power to
live long.
                                                   ? Seneca

Health caregivers are often untrained in dealing with issues surrounding
death. I was given very little instruction in my medical and psychiatric
training about helping people prepare for death, helping families with
bereavement, or dealing with my own feelings of impotence in the face of
terminal illness and bereavements with the death of people I worked with.
  This denial of death by caregivers can be distressing to people who are
dealing with death and bereavement issues. For instance, parents of children
with Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) have premonitions about the
impending death of their children significantly more often than parents
whose children did not die of SIDS. The parents whose children
died were frequently frustrated and distressed by their physicians' failure
to address their fears seriously.
Daniel Benor, Personal Spirituality: Science, Spirit and the Eternal Soul,
Medford, NJ: Wholistic Healing Publications 2006, p. 268-269