Good News About A Cure

We all love good news, especially when delivered by a child. In last Sunday’s NYTimes article, “In Medical First, A Baby With HIV Is Deemed Cured” we learn that doctors announced a “startling development”: a baby had been cured of an HIV infection for the first time. Now 2 1/2, the child has been off drugs for a year with no sign of the disease. Dr. Yvonne Bryson, chief of global pediatric infectious disease at UCLA, calls it “one of the most exciting things I’ve heard in a long time…” and says that it “could  become a new standard of care.”

This is good news, especially since only a few years ago a cure was thought to be virtually impossible. And there’s more good news, which hasn’t yet made headlines.

Dr. Gail Ironson, professor of psychiatry and psychology at University of Miami, has published research proving that HIV/AIDS patients who believe in a loving God fare better after a diagnosis of illness than people who believe in a punitive God. She tells us in a Time article, “The Biology of Belief, “Even accounting for medications, spirituality predicts for better disease control.”

I had the opportunity to interview Dr. Ironson in 2011 and we talked about belief and its effect on our health. It turns out we have a lot in common and had come to some similar conclusions on the topic. Her conclusions were based on scientific laboratory proof; mine were based a life-long study of Christian Science and its published record of healing. Those two routes had led to a similar conclusion: that one’s belief affects one’s health, often in profound ways.

When I mentioned to Dr. Ironson that Christian Scientists had collected over 80,000 verified and published accounts of restored health through prayer alone, over a 130 year period, she wanted to know where this information was kept and who had access. These records have always been open to the public in Christian Science reading rooms all over the world, and now they’re available online. A recent search of this amazing online collection revealed a stirring father/daughter account of freedom from an HIV diagnosis through focused prayer in Kigali, Rwanda. More good news.

As we continue, through different routes, to challenge the concept of incurablity, it seems inevitable that more good news will be coming our way, and that these different routes may continue to converge in unexpected ways. Stay tuned!