[Not Available].
Oncologists have been reluctant a long time to accept the existence of spontaneous remissions in cancer disease. The considerable number of patients whose cancer-disease has regressed without (adequate) treatment should have allayed these doubts. Such remissions could serve as a kind of natural experiments that may lead to greater insights in the biology of tumours and to more efficient therapeutic strategies. In the moment the discussion deals with the explanation of spontaneous remissions by the existing biological or psychosomatic theories. Whereas the fact of spontaneous remissions was denied on the one hand some people claim the occurrence of such remissions for themselves without justification. In order to obtain an epidemiological register of these cases it would be necessary to document all patients in question in a standardised manner. Such a set of data should include psychosocial variable as well since the psychosomatic approach seems to be even more in danger of speculations that resemble closely the causal attributions of the patients.
Schwarz
R
R
Universität Leipzig, Institut für Arbeitsund Sozialmedizin, Selbständige Abteilung für Sozialmedizin, Riemannstr. 32, 04107 Leipzig.
Heim
M
M
Sonnenberg Klinik, Hardtstr. 13, 37242 Bad Sooden-Allendorf.