and body as a thousand-octave piano, with every note--from the
　　　　  highest glissando of altruism to the middle-C of fight-or-flight to
　　　　  bass-heavy autonomic arpeggios--as part of a seamless,
　　　　  interdigitated boogie-woogie.
　　　　  Staggering stuff: What PNI has shown us is that the human being is a
　　　　  walking biological Heisenberg Principle, in which the observer's
　　　　  thoughts, feelings, and attitudes can have measurable effects on
　　　　  physical reality. Within the margins of its homeostatic aloofness,
　　　　  the "It" of our own biology is exquisitely responsive to the "I" of
　　　　  subjective experience.
　　　　  And these responses are no mere grace notes. Hypnosis, long
　　　　  considered a negligible medical therapy, has been successfully
　　　　  employed to treat children with congenital ichtyosis, so-called
　　　　  fishskin disease--a genetic illness. Meditation and relaxation
　　　　  techniques have been shown to affect blood platelets, norepinephrine
　　　　  receptors, and cortisol levels; biofeedback to influence phagocyte
　　　　  activity; mental imagery to enhance natural killer cell function in
　　　　  patients with metastatic cancer. In a now-famous study, David
　　　　  Spiegel, M.D., of Stanford University showed that women with
　　　　  advanced breast cancer who took part in a psychological support
　　　　  group lived twice as long as those who did not take part, a benefit
　　　　  no known drug can claim.
　　　　  Researchers are beginning to wonder if mind-body effects may even
　　　　  contribute to what physician-essayist Lewis Thomas called "the rare
　　　　  but spectacular phenomenon" of spontaneous remission of cancer.
　　　　  Researcher Caryle Hirshberg, Ph.D., a blunt, no-nonsense biochemist,
　　　　  is the coauthor of a near-legendary study that collates some 450
　　　　  medically documented cases. This startling body of evidence--the One
　　　　  White Crow that disproves the thesis All Crows Are Black--will be
　　　　  published this fall, suggesting that such events, treated in most
　　　　  oncology texts as chimerical (if not unreal as a paper moon), could
　　　　  point to yet-unsuspected powers of body and mind.
　　　　  When I spoke with her, Hirshberg, hammering on publication deadline,
　　　　  grumped only half-jokingly about having to write her acknowledgments
　　　　  page. "What am I supposed to say?" she asks, referring to her peers'
　　　　  initial skepticism. "Thanks for telling me not to even bother?" I
　　　　  mention a case the late Norman Cousins recounted concerning a San
　　　　  Diego woman whose cancer was so far advanced the tumor was "like a
　　　　  hand grenade under a thin sheathing of skin." The woman had been