A Prayer Before Dying

Could a healer 1,500 miles away really shrink a brain tumor?

Targ learned all she could about a type of brain cancer called glioblastoma multiforme.

In 2000, she applied to the National Institutes of Health's Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine for $1.5 million to cover two 150-patient trials - one on brain cancer, and another confirmation study on AIDS. The NIH had never granted money to study distant healing. But people with brain cancer were dying, and nothing seemed to work. Her grant was approved.

The data from the trials will not be available for at least three years. Her work is a linchpin in the history of scientific research; if these trials find a prayer effect, it will open the door to much more. If they fail to find one, this kind of research will retreat beyond the fringe.

What We Know About Brain Cancer

Glioblastoma multiforme (GBM) is the most malignant of cancers. For those with a grade-4 tumor, survival rates are uniformly poor. Only 2 percent live more than three years. The average lifespan from diagnosis is 12 months - and that's for patients who receive surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation. Without intervention, patients live about six months.

GBM is one of the rarest cancers. In the US, about 7,000 people die from it every year. (Far more develop cancer of the brain as a result of metastases originating in some other organ, but that's different.)

With GBM, it's not the brain's neurons that are cancerous, it's the cells that feed and physically support them - the neuroglial cells. The tumor can double in size every 10 days.

It is the cancer we understand the very least. We have no clue what causes it or who is likely to get it.

Chemotherapy offers scant hope. The most recent drug enlisted to fight brain cancer is Temodar. In clinical trials, Temodar slowed the progression of some GBM tumors, but its effect on life expectancy was insignificant.

Absolutely the Most Odds-Defying, Eye-Popping Discovery in the Life And Work of Elisabeth Targ

Targ was 40. She'd always wanted a family. She and Comings made plans to get married, in May 2002, and in March she took a leave from research to begin in vitro fertilization treatments. After the first round of eggs were implanted in her uterus, she began to notice that it was hard for her to pronounce words containing the letter b; one morning, in the mirror, she noticed that the left side of her face had gone slack. The usual line of diagnosis would suspect a stroke - yet she felt fine. She'd never had a physical malady - not even bad eyesight or a single cavity. Could it be a symptom of the IVF? She went to the emergency room, not wanting to take chances. They said it was nothing. It persisted. She was scared. They took an MRI of her brain. "Call back for the results tomorrow." She called. They asked her to come in. "Bring your boyfriend."

Targ could read the MRI herself. She'd become an expert. She knew exactly what to look for, exactly what she was looking at.

A tumor.

In her brain, small star-shaped cells were dividing.

It was a coincidence of infinite implausibility.

How Bad Was It?

The tumor appeared to be small and near the skull - it would be easy to remove. Her doctor thought it might be diffuse astrocytoma, a survivable type of brain cancer not as deadly as glioblastoma. Reason to hope! Spread the word! But this is science, which always looks twice. She went back to the hospital for a high-resolution MRI.

This MRI showed the tumor mass near the skull was connected by a tendril to a larger lesion in the thalamus, several twisted layers down, which would be impossible to remove without cutting Targ's brain in half. Her cancer was upgraded from grade 2 to grade 4. Mitchel Berger, her surgeon, wanted to operate immediately. Five days after the initial diagnosis, she was wheeled into surgery at UCSF, where Berger spent six hours performing the craniotomy. Much of the tumor could not be excised.

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