Many of my colleagues thought I was crazy. "How can you feed him that stuff in his dying days?" they would ask, as they showed me article after article stating emphatically, " after a carebil search of the literature, there are no documented cases of recovery from cancer using the macrobiotic diet." Furthermore, many learned writers cited the extreme danger of malnutrition on the macrobiotic diet But every day, instead of dying my husband was looking stronger and healthier. Macrobiotics seemed to be working. I vowed that if he recovered I would document his case and submit it to a medical joumal for publication. I was sure they would want to know of his recovery.

In July 1984, eight months after his case was described as hopeless, not only was my husband feeling healthier than he had ever felt in his life, but a follow-up CT scan revealed that about 70 percent of the cancer was gone! I was beside myself with excitement Some 60,000 people a year in the United States alone die from metastatic colon cancer, and the medical profession has openly stated it has made no significant progress in the treatment of colon cancer in more than fifty years. With this in mind, I called the American Cancer Society to let them know the wonderiul news. I asked to speak to the director. I was shocked when I heard him say "It is of no interest to us." Well, I thought, maybe it was of no interest to him, but perhaps the NIH, and the National Cancer Institute would like to know. They too responded, "It is of no interest to us."

I could not believe that the medical institutions of our country really weren't interested; perhaps they just needed to hear of more than one case, and in writing. So, at great personal expense, I set about finding medically incurable cases that had recovered using macrobiotics. With the help of one of my colleagues, we carefufly documented six such cases, and submitted them in an article to the New England Journal ofMedicine for publication. We were sure the editors of this well known medical joumal would want the rest of the world to know, however strange it was, a small group of people had experienced total regression of medically incurable cancer while using a dietary approach to creating good health. I was deeply shocked when I received their response, "It's of insufficient interest to our readership."

I refused to believe our medical institutions, filled with dedicated scientists, did not want to know there might be an inexpensive way to heal a disease that is killing one in five Americans every year. I decided perhaps my article documenting these cases might rot have been written well enough. After all, I am an emergency room physician and not a professional scientist. Once again, this time with the assistance of a professional medical research writer, I rewrote the paper and submitted it to the Lancer and later to the Journal of the American Medical Association. Both, to my astonishment and dismay, replied it was of insufficient interest to their readership.