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osteopaths. The two schools have moved much closer since then, even though there is an obvious need for much more rigorous evaluation of the effects of complementary medicine. There is still much confusion over whether complementary medicine seeks to "heal" or to "cure". Bristol itself has shifted ground: its early claims about conquering the disease have been replaced by explanation about the need to treat the "whole person". One reason for the confusion is that the healing message (the need to tackle disease from the "inside", that there is something deeper than the merely physical) can often imply curing as well. Bristol now talks about healing the spirit and mind, even if the body is too damaged. It continues to guide patients to look at the big questions: Who am I? What am I here for? How am I travelling? Where am I going? Two possible reasons for Bristol’s results are obviousthe diet, or differences in the psychological make up of the patients. Nearly all medical commentators are agreed that the other elements in the Bristol therapy (meditation, relaxation therapy, psychological counselling) are unlikely to have been the cause. Indeed, a study by Stanford University researchers published in The Lancet last year found that cancer patients who were provided with group therapy lived on average twice as long. In its early days Bristol imposed a strict vegan diet, but this was modified some years ago. However, as one medical commentator noted, it is as illogical to believe cancer can be banished by changing the patient’s diet as to believe it will go away if the patient stops smoking. Studies on Bristol’s patients are continuing. There may have been important psychological differences between the two groups of patients. Dr Steven Greer, director of the Cancer Research Campaign’s Psychological Medicine Group at the Royal Marsden, believes that the psychological stance of patients can affect the course of certain early-stage cancers. In a paper on 15 years’ observation of 62 patients, he concluded that "45% of those who adopt either a fighting spirit or denial, are alive 15 years on; compared to only 17 % in all the other groups". The further studies should throw up important new evidence. They will also look at a dimension quite different from survivability-quality of life. Nearly all the survivors of Bristol (and the relatives of the patients who died) paid tribute to, with the exception of the diet, the centre’s contribution to this dimension. The dignity of the patients has been the most inspiring part of the debate of the past fortnight.
Malcolm Dean
Round the World USSR: Theft of Chernobyl data A gang of teenage thieves in Minsk have destroyed irreplaceable data on the health of 670 000 people living in the eastern part of the Byelorussian SSR--one of the areas which bore the brunt of the fallout from Chernobyl. The data was stored on the floppy discs of two computers that were stolen-an IBM and an Olivetti, which belonged to the Research Institute of Oncology and Radiation Medicine in Minsk. According to the Byelorussian Minister of Health, Vasil Kazakou, the loss of the data virtually wipes out, not only the work of the past four years, but also the possibility
of effective treatment and, in the future, prophylaxis. "The accumulated dose received by the patients could be reconstructed with great difficulty", he told reporters at the time of the theft, "but it will be impossible to reconstruct the dynamics of its accumulation". The loss of the data, he said, would cause "considerable damage" to the "fight for the health of the inhabitants of Byelorussia". Although the Chernobyl nuclear power station lies within the Ukrainian S SR, it is only six kilometres from the Byelorussian frontier, and at the time of the accident, the wind was from the south east. Byelorussia therefore caught the primary impact of the fallout, and then, a few days later, when the wind changed, a heavy rainfall brought down more contamination in the east of the republic, at some distance from the 30 km exclusion zone around the power station. Byelorussians are now estimated to have received some 70% of the total dose of radiation released in the Soviet Union, but until February, 1989, this fact was treated as a state secret, and reports of congenital defects, leukaemia, and other symptoms of radiation were officially dismissed as "non-significant deviations from the norm" or "radiophobia". This threeyear silence considerably hampered the work of the doctors who were attempting to monitor the extent of the contamination, and to treat the growing number of victims. A team from the London-based Byelorussian Radiation Relief Committee who visited Byelorussia last month spoke of overcrowded hospitals, and-in particular, in Gomel, in the eastern "island" of contamination--of an almost total lack of diagnostic and treatment facilities. Byelorussian paediatricians, they said, put the chance of survival of children with Chernobyl-related leukaemia at not more than 15 %. In addition, there is the widespread problem of what is locally termed "Chernobyl AIDS"-the radiation-induced destruction of the immune system. The loss of the radiation data-which included not only the doses received by individual victims, but also details of the contamination of some 20 000 settlements throughout Byelorussia, is a further blow to an already stricken people. From the onset, both police and doctors assumed that the thieves did not realise what they had stolen. A press and poster campaign was at once mounted, appealing to them to return the stolen material, and suggesting ways in which they could do so, without risking arrest. "In the name of the doctors fighting for the health of our children", pleaded Minister Kazakou, "in the name of the sick children who fill our radiation clinics to overflowing, in the name of the parents who hope for their recovery, in the name of the Byelorussian nation, we all beg you: don’t destroy the data you have stolen, don’t wipe the discs". He further pleaded with them to think of how hundreds, maybe thousands, of people were working to save the Byelorussian population from the effects of Chernobyl, and how just a few people could reduce that work to nothing. Surely, thieves intelligent enough to steal computers valued at over 100 000 roubles, he urged, were intelligent enough to read the papers and heed the appeals. But the campaign was in vain. Last week the thieves were arrested and the floppy discs were recovered-but they had been wiped. They were handed over to a forlorn team of computer experts who set about trying to recover at least some of the lost data from the discs. As for the thieves, the police chief of the Minsk province, General Lician Sabaleuski, has confirmed that they were, as suspected, merely interested in making money. Vera Rich
osteopaths. The two schools have moved much closer since then, even though there is an obvious need for much more rigorous evaluation of the effects of complementary medicine. There is still much confusion over whether complementary medicine seeks to "heal" or to "cure". Bristol itself has shifted ground: its early claims about conquering the disease have been replaced by explanation about the need to treat the "whole person". One reason for the confusion is that the healing message (the need to tackle disease from the "inside", that there is something deeper than the merely physical) can often imply curing as well. Bristol now talks about healing the spirit and mind, even if the body is too damaged. It continues to guide patients to look at the big questions: Who am I? What am I here for? How am I travelling? Where am I going? Two possible reasons for Bristol’s results are obviousthe diet, or differences in the psychological make up of the patients. Nearly all medical commentators are agreed that the other elements in the Bristol therapy (meditation, relaxation therapy, psychological counselling) are unlikely to have been the cause. Indeed, a study by Stanford University researchers published in The Lancet last year found that cancer patients who were provided with group therapy lived on average twice as long. In its early days Bristol imposed a strict vegan diet, but this was modified some years ago. However, as one medical commentator noted, it is as illogical to believe cancer can be banished by changing the patient’s diet as to believe it will go away if the patient stops smoking. Studies on Bristol’s patients are continuing. There may have been important psychological differences between the two groups of patients. Dr Steven Greer, director of the Cancer Research Campaign’s Psychological Medicine Group at the Royal Marsden, believes that the psychological stance of patients can affect the course of certain early-stage cancers. In a paper on 15 years’ observation of 62 patients, he concluded that "45% of those who adopt either a fighting spirit or denial, are alive 15 years on; compared to only 17 % in all the other groups". The further studies should throw up important new evidence. They will also look at a dimension quite different from survivability-quality of life. Nearly all the survivors of Bristol (and the relatives of the patients who died) paid tribute to, with the exception of the diet, the centre’s contribution to this dimension. The dignity of the patients has been the most inspiring part of the debate of the past fortnight.
Malcolm Dean
Round the World USSR: Theft of Chernobyl data A gang of teenage thieves in Minsk have destroyed irreplaceable data on the health of 670 000 people living in the eastern part of the Byelorussian SSR--one of the areas which bore the brunt of the fallout from Chernobyl. The data was stored on the floppy discs of two computers that were stolen-an IBM and an Olivetti, which belonged to the Research Institute of Oncology and Radiation Medicine in Minsk. According to the Byelorussian Minister of Health, Vasil Kazakou, the loss of the data virtually wipes out, not only the work of the past four years, but also the possibility
of effective treatment and, in the future, prophylaxis. "The accumulated dose received by the patients could be reconstructed with great difficulty", he told reporters at the time of the theft, "but it will be impossible to reconstruct the dynamics of its accumulation". The loss of the data, he said, would cause "considerable damage" to the "fight for the health of the inhabitants of Byelorussia". Although the Chernobyl nuclear power station lies within the Ukrainian S SR, it is only six kilometres from the Byelorussian frontier, and at the time of the accident, the wind was from the south east. Byelorussia therefore caught the primary impact of the fallout, and then, a few days later, when the wind changed, a heavy rainfall brought down more contamination in the east of the republic, at some distance from the 30 km exclusion zone around the power station. Byelorussians are now estimated to have received some 70% of the total dose of radiation released in the Soviet Union, but until February, 1989, this fact was treated as a state secret, and reports of congenital defects, leukaemia, and other symptoms of radiation were officially dismissed as "non-significant deviations from the norm" or "radiophobia". This threeyear silence considerably hampered the work of the doctors who were attempting to monitor the extent of the contamination, and to treat the growing number of victims. A team from the London-based Byelorussian Radiation Relief Committee who visited Byelorussia last month spoke of overcrowded hospitals, and-in particular, in Gomel, in the eastern "island" of contamination--of an almost total lack of diagnostic and treatment facilities. Byelorussian paediatricians, they said, put the chance of survival of children with Chernobyl-related leukaemia at not more than 15 %. In addition, there is the widespread problem of what is locally termed "Chernobyl AIDS"-the radiation-induced destruction of the immune system. The loss of the radiation data-which included not only the doses received by individual victims, but also details of the contamination of some 20 000 settlements throughout Byelorussia, is a further blow to an already stricken people. From the onset, both police and doctors assumed that the thieves did not realise what they had stolen. A press and poster campaign was at once mounted, appealing to them to return the stolen material, and suggesting ways in which they could do so, without risking arrest. "In the name of the doctors fighting for the health of our children", pleaded Minister Kazakou, "in the name of the sick children who fill our radiation clinics to overflowing, in the name of the parents who hope for their recovery, in the name of the Byelorussian nation, we all beg you: don’t destroy the data you have stolen, don’t wipe the discs". He further pleaded with them to think of how hundreds, maybe thousands, of people were working to save the Byelorussian population from the effects of Chernobyl, and how just a few people could reduce that work to nothing. Surely, thieves intelligent enough to steal computers valued at over 100 000 roubles, he urged, were intelligent enough to read the papers and heed the appeals. But the campaign was in vain. Last week the thieves were arrested and the floppy discs were recovered-but they had been wiped. They were handed over to a forlorn team of computer experts who set about trying to recover at least some of the lost data from the discs. As for the thieves, the police chief of the Minsk province, General Lician Sabaleuski, has confirmed that they were, as suspected, merely interested in making money. Vera Rich
