Why, as a cancer doctor, I believe in the power of prayer to heal
After a decade of researching the connection between science and prayer, I accepted that prayer can have a significant impact on patient outcomes.
As a cancer practitioner for 30 years, I have encountered at least one terminal cancer patient who was healed by a worldwide prayer effort on his behalf.
Rather than dismiss this miracle as inconsistent with my empiric and rationally based training, it made me consider how the new scientific knowledge of quantum physics and human consciousness might support the idea of prayer-facilitated healing.
Indeed, studies carried out at such institutions as Princeton and the University of California San Francisco showed that quantum level mechanisms were impacting results in our macro world. There is now a burgeoning field of “quantum medicine,” a more comprehensive approach combining physical and psychological applications, based on this connection.
So, after a decade of researching this prayer/science connection, I accepted the reality that prayer can have a significant impact on patient outcomes. Which is why, when in 2018 I was diagnosed with terminal prostate cancer that had aggressively spread to my lymph nodes and bones, I knew that prayer had to be a major component of my cancer management.
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Rather than receive only the standard medical procedure for my condition — castration, which would not have cured me anyway — I also created a video asking people to pray for me and then shared it on social media.
The response was incredible. I received messages from people all around the world, in different languages, from different beliefs, who said they were indeed praying for my recovery.
The belief in prayer, however, certainly doesn’t preclude the use of other forms of cancer therapy. The cancer treatment paradigm is one of combining therapies with different mechanisms, to obtain the best results. My situation was unusual.
Treatment and prayer can work together
Since I was unwilling to undergo the unthinkable standard medical procedure, I paired my prayer initiative with a new immunotherapy regimen that I had developed. The regimen essentially creates a vaccine unique to each person’s cancer, using your immune system to seek out your cancer and kill it wherever it might be.
Our data, presented last year at the biggest annual cancer research summit, showed that we can make 40% of stage 4 prostate cancer patients disease free using this immunotherapy regimen.
We were also excited to find that pancreatic cancer patients appear to respond to the treatment as well. We now have an FDA clinical trial just beginning, and we hope we can bring this advancement to people around the world.
It is now three years since my diagnosis. Prayer combined with immunotherapy treatment has left me free of metastatic cancer and potentially cured.
My journey has taken me from being a scientifically based “empirical” atheist to someone with a profound faith. I suspect we are entering an exciting time where the centuries long separation of spirituality and science will come together again. They can support each other on the foundation of quantum entanglement, or what Albert Einstein called “spooky action” at a distance.
Thoughts and prayers helped me
Do you have to be religious to benefit from prayer? As I stated in my video, I didn’t think it mattered whether the people praying for me were Christians, Muslims, Jews, Buddhists or Hindus. They could even be secular agnostics who were putting out thoughts for my healing. Despite all the bad press for sending “thoughts and prayers," they really did benefit me.
Would I be cancer free without prayer? I don’t know, but I suspect not. Was there another reason that I was placed in this position? Perhaps. On these questions I can only speculate.
As one of my good friends said to me, “What are the chances that you would be given a fatal disease, one you have spent your life helping others to overcome, and then be cured of it?”
On the larger scale, this year, there will be an estimated 1.7 million new cases of cancer diagnosed in the United States, with more than 600,000 people dying from the disease.
While we in the medical field work on new treatments, and we hope a cure one day, in the meantime, we need to pray. In this time of great political and religious division, I am convinced we can come together and pray for something that transcends our differences: a cure for cancer.
Dr. Gary Onik is medical director at The Center for Recurrent Cancer in Aventura, Florida, and an adjunct professor of Mechanical Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University.