The Institute of Noetic Sciences published Spontaneous Remission. The Remission Project is a database of medically reported cases of spontaneous remission in the world, with more than 3,500 references from more than 800 journals in 20 different languages. Spontaneous remission is defined as “the disappearance, complete or incomplete, of a disease or cancer without medical treatment or treatment that is considered inadequate to produce the resulting disappearance of disease symptoms or tumor." The data suggests that the cases were not as rare as first perceived and on the increase. It also suggests that psychosocial consideration may influence the cases survival rate and considerable evidence showed the attributions to positive mood and ‘fighting spirit’.
Below is section of the introduction and link to the full downloadable document.
The Spectrum of Self-Repair
The rare but spectacular phenomenon of spontaneous remission of cancer persists in the annals of medicine, totally inexplicable but real, a hypothetical straw to clutch in the search for cure. From time to time patients turn up with far advanced cancer, beyond the possibility of cure. They undergo exploratory surgery, the surgeon observes metastases throughout the peritoneal cavity and liver, and the patient is sent home to die, only to turn up again 10 years later free of disease and in good health. There are now several hundred such cases in world scientific literature, and no one doubts the validity of the observations. But no one has the ghost of an idea how it happens. Some have suggested the sudden mobilization of immunological defense, others propose that an intervening infection by bacteria or viruses has done something to destroy the cancer cells, but no one knows. It is a fascinating mystery, but at the same time a solid basis for hope in the future: If several hundred patients have succeeded in doing this sort of thing, eliminating vast numbers of malignant cells on their own, the possibility that medicine can learn to accomplish the same thing at will is surely within the reach of imagining.
Lewis Thomas, The Youngest Science: Notes of a Medicine Watcher [Viking Press 1983, 205].
Remission: The Science of Self-Repair
A new area of biology is emerging: the study of spontaneous remissions from normally fatal illnesses. Of all the astonishing properties of living systems the two most amazing are their ability to reproduce themselves and the ability to repair themselves in a wide variety of ways. As Lewis Thomas suggests, scientists studying spontaneous remission could uncover the mysteries of how the human body can cure itself, turning those mysteries into mechanisms of healing “at will.”