Flying in the face of the evidence
Francis King
LIVING PROOF: A MEDICAL MUTINY by Michael Gearin-Tosh Scribner, £12.99, pp. 327, ISBN 0743206770 Many readers of this painful, provocative book may decide that it should have been subtitled not 'A Medical Mutiny' but 'A Medical Miracle'. In 1994 its author, senior English tutor at St Catherine's College, Oxford, was diagnosed as suffering from multiple myeloma (cancer of the bone-marrow), from which long-term survival is virtually unknown. Despite this, he is at present not merely alive but also still working. What makes this even more remarkable is that he defied five leading oncologists in refusing the chemotherapy urged on him.
In reaching his decision Gearin-Tosh was fortunate to have two advantages denied to all but a tiny minority of people similarly afflicted. Firstly, he had the connections to enable him to discuss possible treatments with a whole panel of highly distinguished, extremely busy and remarkably patient experts, ranging from Professor Sir David Weatherall of Oxford University to Professor Robert A, Kyle of the Mayo Clinic. Secondly, he possessed the intelligence not merely to understand what they told him but also to evaluate it scrupulously before deciding how he would proceed. This high-risk gamble ended in his rejection of conventional for alternative medicine. There followed a regime, persisted in to the present, of high-concentration vitamins, burdensome diet, acupuncture, what he calls 'visualisations', and massive enemas of coffee self-administered three or four times a day.
During all his tribulations, this obviously likeable man had the support of innumerable friends, the most active of them former students of his. Some of these people, eager to be closely involved in the drama of his life-and-death struggle, exhausted and exasperated him with their morbid probings, endlessly prolonged on the telephone. He calls them mini-Draculas. In this his experience differs from my own. When I was also seriously ill with cancer, I was always amazed and touched by the delicate tact with which friends ventured their enquiries and advice.
Four people have been of major comfort and support to Gearin-Tosh. One of these was a London GP, skilled at dealing not merely with illnesses but also with patients. Christian Carritt — whose twin brother, the renowned art expert David Carritt, himself died (Gearin-Tosh does not mention this) of cancer in early middle age. Even more important was a former pupil, Carmen Wheatley, constantly at hand not merely to cheer him on in his mutiny but also to badger leading experts with enquiries when he was too discouraged or debilitated to do so himself. At that period Gearin-Tosh had been living with Rachel Trickett, an underrated novelist and former principal of St Hugh's, in a non-sexual relationship for 25 years. One soon realises that Trickett, 20 years older than GearinTosh, deeply resented Wheatley's intrusion. A Russian army captain, whom, oddly. the Moscow Theatre Academy produced as bodyguard when Gearin-Tosh was lecturing for them, completes this quartet. Gearin-Tosh reciprocated by inviting the captain to England, and later to the States.
As Gearin-Tosh is intelligent enough to realise, his remarkable survival is no absolute proof of the efficacy of alternative medicine in the treatment of cancer. It is possible that, without his rigorous regime, he would have been long since dead. But it is equally possible that the situation would have been precisely what it is now. One piece of anecdotal evidence often contradicts another. For example, 14 years ago, my bout with cancer coincided with that of an old friend Vera Russell, one of the most beautiful and intellectually formidable women I have ever known. Our cancers were of precisely the same kind. After our operations, she underwent all the therapies embraced by Gearin-Tosh. I merely waited. She died, mourned by a host of friends, within a brief time. I am still around to write this. Like multiple sclerosis, cancer is the most capricious of diseases.
This book carries a bizarre recommendation from Anne Robinson: 'Achingly funny. And the prose is to die for.' Though Gearin-Tosh can certainly be witty, I doubt if many people will ache with mirth at his story; and though his prose style, in a work composed largely of diary entries, is always lucid, it is no way exceptional. Sir David Weatherall's sober recommendation is far more apt and carries far more weight: It does a great service to all of us.'
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