Getting Well Again's main claim is that "cancer is caused by negative attitudes, and meditation helps the body fight cancer". Patients are encouraged to try relaxation and mental imagery techniques, including visualizations of white blood cells as white sharks eating cancer cells. Some people suggest that Simonton's program may have positive effects by helping people to feel that they are "doing something" positive. However long seminars where patients practice self-induced hallucinations are a threat to mental health, and making patients feel guilty about their disease, asking, "Why did you want to die? Why did you need to have cancer?" is destructive. The official line is to work within the traditional chemotherapy framework; however this program has encouraged people to abandon effective care as they put too much reliance in their own ability to change the course of disease.
Former victims and relatives have come forward and at least one of Simonton's operations, Au Coeur de la Communication (ACC), has been formally condemned by parliamentary reports on sects in Canada, France and Belgium.

When I was diagnosed with cancer 3 years ago, I found this book on Amazon.com. It was an empowering and refreshing take on cancer management and treatment. When you have cancer you sometimes feel everything is out of your control. This book helped me to understand that there were many things I could still control about my disease and how I chose to cope with it. And yes, I meditated and used healing imagery!! I also ate healthy foods, exercised and kept working even though I felt like I had a hangover for 6 months. Like anything, you take the parts of this book's methodology that work for you and use them. It would be foolish to stop your treatment against your physician's advice just because you read a book. But it is also foolish to sit back and expect the doctors to cure you without participating and doing your part--including helping your body heal itself, whether physically or emotionally. In no way did this book make me feel like having cancer was my fault.

Now, I am cancer free and I am re-ordering the book for my cousin's husband who was just diagnosed with prostate cancer. I hope that he will enjoy it as much as I did. No, it doesn't replace traditional treatment, but at least the authors encourage you to take control of your destiny.

By the way, I ran a marathon exactly one year after the day of my last chemo treatment. Anyone who thinks positive thinking, healing imagery, meditation and "mind over matter" is a bunch of new-age hype, is welcome to join me on my next 26.2 mile run!!

I got Chronic Fatigue Immune Deficiency Syndrome in l972 which went undiagnosed for 19 years, but the second half of this book helped me cope with an illness that devastated my life, and it gave me the tools to hang in and eventually help others like me. I have given away dozen of copies of it to both CFIDS and Cancer patients. Its one of a kind and the very best.