TM's 'Former Cancer Patient' Dies of Her 'Former' Disease
Judy Stein Rewrites Her History - and Her Name!
In 1987, Phil Donahue devoted an entire show to the miraculous healing claims of Transcendental Meditation and Maharishi Ayur-Veda, its trademarked line of traditional Indian health products. In addition to demonstrations of "Yogic Flying" (including a remarkable demonstration of the feat by the unenlightened Phil Donahue), herbal oil treatments, and tasting of TM's cure-all Maharishi Amrith Kalash, a woman named Marian Thompson, a long-time TMer, gave a moving testimonial about how her breast cancer had been healed with the help of TM and Maharishi Ayur-Veda.
As usual, Donahue did not broadcast any follow-up announcement when Thompson died of her cancer 2-3 years later.
Ever ready to spin TM's dubious claims, Judy Stein didn't hesitate to jump in to turn TM's words on their head. She posted a transcript of the show with Thompson's correction of Donahue deleted. (When introduced to the TV audience as a "cancer patient," Thompson interrupted Donahue to claim she was a "former cancer patient.")
Note: Under the guise of protecting Thompson's "privacy," Judy replaced the woman's name with "Jane Doe" throughout the transcript - a little too late to protect her privacy, considering the fact that Thompson went on national television to describe her breast cancer, mastectomy, treatments, and side effects. I suspect Judy was trying to keep TMers who knew or heard of Thompson from learning that the woman had died of the disease that she went on the Donahue show to announce she no longer had.
PHIL DONAHUE: I want you to meet Jane Doe, a cancer patient. Jane, that's--
JANE DOE: [unintelligible]
PHIL DONAHUE: A former -- I am corrected, and I'm pleased to be so. What happened, Jane? What -- did you--
What Tompson said, of course, was intelligible. This was how she was actually introduced:
PHIL DONAHUE: I want you to meet Marian Thompson, a cancer patient. Marian, that's--
MARIAN THOMPSON: Former cancer patient...
PHIL DONAHUE: A former-- I am corrected, and I'm pleased to be so. What happened, Marian? What-- did you--
Apparently believing that even a lousy offense makes a good defense, Judy launched a crackpot campaign to defame me as a "liar" for having said that Marian Thompson claimed to be cured of her disease. Marian Thompson did not claim to be free of cancer, Judy insisted. She had claimed to no longer be a patient (never mind that Thompson, who was there with two of her doctors, told the audience that she was wearing a wig from her "just completed" chemotherapy.)
What's more, Judy argued, Thompson said she was in remission and remission means that she wasn't cured.
Nonsense. Remission means a reduction or disappearance of symptoms. A cancer patient, who is cured, is of course in remission (although unfortunately not every cancer patient in remission is cured).
Funny, Judy didn't bother to redefine another key word that shows Thompson was claiming to be cured: Right after claiming to be a "former cancer patient," Thompson stated that she "had metastatic breast cancer."
It's hard to redefine "had" so that it's not a past tense verb. But if anyone can do it, it will be Judy.
Below is Judy Stein's transcription of the part of the Donahue Show that featured Marian Thompson (but with Thompson's name and deleted comment restored). The reader should decide for him or herself whether the TV audience came away with the idea that Thompson has been cured of her cancer with the help of TM and Maharishi Ayur-Veda.
Dr. DEEPAK CHOPRA: And the bottom line is happiness. If you are happy, then you are going to be healthy. The perfect chemistry of health is happiness. When he said-- Phil said, "If you're in love, you're going to have-- you're less likely to catch a cold," actually it's true even of cancer, of heart disease, because these thoughts translate into the flux of neurotransmitters in the brain, they cause changes in the chemistry of the brain which can affect things like the cardiovascular system, the immune response.
PHIL DONAHUE: I want you to meet Marian Thompson, a cancer patient. Marian, that's--
MARIAN THOMPSON: Former cancer patient...
PHIL DONAHUE: A former-- I am corrected, and I'm pleased to be so. What happened, Marian? What-- did you--
would-- how much do you want to share with us in regard to the nature of your own pathology?
MARIAN THOMPSON: I had metastatic breast cancer. [Ed. Note: By using the past tense, Thompson strongly implied - if not actually stated, that she no longer has cancer.] It went into my lungs very seriously. And my oncologist said that cancer's a stress-related disease, and anything I could do to reduce that stress, she was all in favor of. So she supported me in my search for a program, and I found the Ayur-Vedic program to be beneficial in reducing the stress, not just of the disease but of the chemotherapy treatments that I was--
PHIL DONAHUE: Did you have surgery at all?
MARIAN THOMPSON: I had-- no, I had a mastectomy originally, and then I had some surgical biopsy of the lungs and removal of some of the tissue.
PHIL DONAHUE: Mastectomy of one lung-- one breast removed, and I assume it was modified radical and--
MARIAN THOMPSON: It was not a radical, no.
PHIL DONAHUE: It wasn't a radical, OK. And then you had therapy, chemotherapy?
MARIAN THOMPSON: I had chemotherapy after it went into my lungs, yes.
PHIL DONAHUE: And what turned the corner for you?
MARIAN THOMPSON: Ayur-Veda really turned the corner for me, because the--
PHIL DONAHUE: Well, did somebody say something to you, or-- I know this is complicated, but what information that-- did you get that allowed for you to enjoy this wonderful change that you-- health that you enjoy now?
MARIAN THOMPSON: The experience of Ayur-Veda. There's a mental aspect of Ayur-Veda as well as a physiological aspect, and I received a psychophysiological technique from Dr. Chopra, and that he talks about in his book.
PHIL DONAHUE: Is it TM, is it Transcendental Meditation?
MARIAN THOMPSON: I practice TM, and then there is another technique in addition to the TM that I practice.
PHIL DONAHUE: [unintelligible]?
MARIAN THOMPSON: It's very, very simple. It's a mental technique. I sit and I close my eyes, and I just go within.
PHIL DONAHUE: And you do it--
MARIAN THOMPSON: And the body experiences an inner bliss, an inner happiness. And that gets translated into body-- into the body feeling better and the body getting stronger and able to throw off the disease.
PHIL DONAHUE: Were you-- you must have been scared to death when you first learned about your own illness.
MARIAN THOMPSON: Actually, I was practicing the technique at the time, and I credit the technique with giving me an evenness towards the experience. In other words, I wasn't scared-- I was scared, but I wasn't scared to death by the disease, no. I was scared to life by the disease. [laughs]
PHIL DONAHUE: But you went from fear to something else, huh?
MARIAN THOMPSON: I went from fear to action, and the action was that I took part in a-- in the program. I went to the Ayur-Vedic clinic in Lancaster, and I did the chemotherapy in conjunction with this program.
PHIL DONAHUE: Right.
Dr. NANCY LONSDORF: So Marian's
[unintelligible]--
PHIL DONAHUE: Do you do this every day?
MARIAN THOMPSON: Do I practice [unintelligible]--
PHIL DONAHUE: Is it-- yes, is it like a regular-- is it a routine? Is it a two o'clock appointment with yourself, or--
MARIAN THOMPSON: For TM, I practice TM twice a day, morning and evening, and I--
PHIL DONAHUE: How long does it take?
MARIAN THOMPSON: Oh, people are trained to meditate for 15 or 20 minutes. I'm an advanced meditator, and I have a bit longer program than that in the morning and the evening.
PHIL DONAHUE: And you feel better after?
MARIAN THOMPSON: You feel better afterwards. You feel clearer, you feel fresher, you feel rested, is the important thing to my body.
PHIL DONAHUE: And you-- you know that-- Are you still on chemo?
MARIAN THOMPSON: I've just completed the chemotherapy. My doctor was very, very amazed, I'm in complete remission. There's no sign of the disease now. [audience applause]
PHIL DONAHUE: Uh-huh. Did you have hair loss?
MARIAN THOMPSON: Yes, I did.
PHIL DONAHUE: Yes. You make us feel good about ourselves, Marian. You said you did have hair loss, so obviously there's--
MARIAN THOMPSON: I was experiencing side effects from the disease, and that was my main reason for going to the Ayur-Vedic clinic to receive some of the therapies, such as this gentleman is receiving now. [pointing to demonstration of warm oil treatment] And I found that that helped tremendously.
PHIL DONAHUE: You had the oil?
MARIAN THOMPSON: I've had the oil, and within three days of the beginning of the treatment--
Dr. DEEPAK CHOPRA: We've done some studies, Phil, where we see that when people undergo these techniques, their immune system builds up, so there's-- it's easier for them to fight the disease, the cancer.
Dr. NANCY LONSDORF: In fact, one of the major complications of chemotherapy is that the immune system gets severely depressed, and people are susceptible to other illnesses. And in Marian's case, it was very amazing that they did the blood studies at the time when her blood count should have been extremely low, and her oncologist was amazed that her blood counts were normal. So these obviously have a very powerful effect of strengthening the immune system, various herbal supplements and panchakarma treatments.
[Judy's note: The discussion then turned to other things. The next excerpt is the single other mention of cancer on the show.]
PHIL DONAHUE: I must not-- I must say that-- I notice you have your pots and pans. Now, you will pardon my cynicism, but here comes the pitch. Maharishi Amrit Kalash, boy, I gotta have some of that, I'll tell you.
Dr. NANCY LONSDORF: You'd like it, Phil.
PHIL DONAHUE: I would?
Dr. DEEPAK CHOPRA: Actually, yes, you'd love it.
Dr. NANCY LONSDORF: Make you feel very good.
PHIL DONAHUE: But how do we know you're not with the wagon and the snake oil?
Dr. NANCY LONSDORF: Scientific research, Phil.
PHIL DONAHUE: I mean, here we go.
Dr. DEEPAK CHOPRA: That's absolutely correct, absolutely correct. And that's why we are not even making any claims at this point. [Ed. Note: Notice the two sides of Chopra's mouth out of which he speaks: First he makes medical claims and then he says they're not making claims. Then he makes some more.]We are only funding research at academic centers. In fact, there's some research going on on Maharishi Amrit Kalash at the University of Ohio, professor of pathology there, shows that when people take this, the response to endorphins, which is the body's own hormones that mediate relief of pain, it goes up. There's increased binding of these endorphins to the brain cells. There's also research that shows that T-cell killer activity goes up.
So we're not making any claims, but we want you to know that there's a lot of research that's going on, animal research, research on these rasayanas that shows that you can, in fact, have-- these herbs have anticarcinogenic effects, they have effects on the immune response. And it's something that we have to document.
[Judy's note: Again the discussion turned to other things. Later on in the show, at different times, there were two questions from the audience concerning Marian Thompson, which follow.]
1st AUDIENCE MEMBER: Would every cancer patient do as well as this lady?
Dr. DEEPAK CHOPRA: No, I don't think so, because we all come from a certain genetic makeup. We have a certain background, we have interactions with society that are different, we eat different foods. So there are lots of complex factors.
2nd AUDIENCE MEMBER: I think the whole mind control thing is understandable, but I'd like to ask the cancer patient, how is she sure, if she was under chemotherapy and had surgery, that-- which really worked.
Dr. DEEPAK CHOPRA: Well, it's a good question. She can answer, but I can also answer to some extent, that she was given a prognosis that she didn't fulfill. She didn't fulfill the self-fulfilling prophecy that most physicians give out to patients when they say, ``You have only one in a nine-- or one in a ten chance of living,'' as if they were God.
[Editor's note: Here Chopra himself makes the claim that Thompson is cured. She has not "fulfilled" the oncologists grim prognosis, he says. Pretty amazing statement to be made considering Thompson had only just completed chemotherapy.]
Marian THOMPSON: I was told that I would have three months to live if I didn't do the chemotherapy, so naturally I took it under advice, and I did the chemotherapy. But I feel that the Ayur-Veda, especially the psychophysiological technique, allowed the chemotherapy to work by reducing the stress associated with the disease and with that prognosis.