two books reviewed : Suzanne O’Sullivan - Jo Marchant
Teresa Binstock
It’s All in Your Head: True Stories of Imaginary Illness. By Suzanne O’Sullivan. Chatto & Windus; 336 pages; £16.99. To be published in America by Other Press in January.
Cure: A Journey into the Science of Mind Over Body. By Jo Marchant. Crown; 320 pages; $26. Canongate; £16.99.
"....Two things hold back this new field. The first is a
pervasive view in medical science that it is all outlandish. A
recurring confession from the researchers Ms Marchant meets is
that they fear for their academic reputation if they study
alternative treatments (one describes the experience as coming
“out of the closet”; “Everyone looked at me sort of funny,” says
another).
Connected to that, probably, is lack of funding for research.
Pharmaceutical companies shun such treatments because they are
not moneymakers. Only 0.2% of the $30 billion annual budget of
America’s National Institutes of Health goes toward testing
mind-body therapies. Ms Marchant’s book makes a convincing case
why that is short-sighted."