Patron Saint of Spontaneous Regression

Woo hoo! The Catholic Church has found another saint!

When cancer spread into her lungs, doctors told Audrey Toguchi she had six months to live, at best, and suggested chemotherapy as the only option.

Toguchi, however, turned to another source—a Catholic missionary who died more than a century ago.

"I'm going to Molokai to pray to Father Damien," Toguchi calmly told Dr. Walter Y.M. Chang after hearing her death sentence.

Assuming that the cancer diagnosis was accurate in the first place, of the thousands of cancer victims who die annually, this one's cancer went into regression. Not unheard of by any means. Of course to the believer, it means she was helped by a guy who's been dead for a hundred years. (Apparently no one told her that Damien is the name of the Antichrist. Oh, wait, that's Obama.)

On a doctor's visit on Oct. 2, 1998, a month after cancer was first detected in her lungs, doctors expected the tumors to have grown. Instead, they had shrunk, and by May 1999 tests confirmed that they had disappeared without treatment.
. . .
Church authorities approved Damien's first miracle in 1992. In that case, Sister Simplicia Hue of France, who was dying of a gastrointestinal illness, recovered overnight in 1895 after she began a novena, or nine days of prayer, to Damien.

Ah yes, the infallible nature of nineteenth century medicine means there's no way that event could have been anything but a miracle!

Dr. Richard Schilsky, a University of Chicago cancer specialist who is president of the American Society of Clinical Oncology, . . . said it isn't clear that all three lung growths were cancer, since only one was biopsied. And there are several reasons people get small inflammatory nodules in the lungs that might resolve spontaneously.

"The point here is that the primary tumor was treated," and that could have helped her immune system control any remaining cancer in her body, said Schilsky, who did not treat Toguchi. He based his comments on Chang's case report in the October 2000 edition of the Hawaii Medical Journal.

Rare cases of spontaneous remission, or regression, are reported, mostly involving melanoma skin cancer, kidney cancer or lymphoma—hardly ever solid tumors like breast, prostate or colon cancers, Schilsky said.

"The bottom line is, it probably does happen. Obviously, it happens very rarely because it is the nature of cancer to grow, not to regress," he said.

But we don't want any common sense or appeals to science. This was a miracle!

Audrey Toguchi still prays often to Damien, asking him to help others.

And here I thought you were supposed to be praying to god. Hmm.

Any word on his continued success rate? Bueller? Bueller?