ABSTRACT
In Spontaneous Healing, a best-selling book by a physician, Andrew Weil holds out the possibility of full recovery for anyone. He said he wrote the book so people could learn enough about the "body's natural healing system" to make it work for them. Weil even includes an eight-week program "to assist the reader in gradual, permanent lifestyle changes that will enhance the body's natural healing powers". Weil's whole approach assumes an active role for patients. "Treatment originates outside, healing comes from within", he declares, urging both physicians and patients to take personal testimonies of healing more seriously. Patients think that it is possible to strengthen what Weil and many prominent physicians before him have called "the natural healing system". They want the same kind of collaborative, respectful relationships with their health care providers, the kind that Bernie Siegel and Andrew Weil call for. They want an active voice in their treatment, and they want doctors to listen to them.
