Radiation, chemotherapy, surgery, or some combination of the three set patients back tens if not hundreds of thousands of dollars. Healthcare insurance typically pays 80 percent of the total costs after patients shell out a deductible that can be as high as $10,000.

From Natural Health Dossier then, is a recipe for an herbal tea that was developed by a Canadian nurse, Rene Caisse, starting in the 1920s.

In 1922, Caisse noticed scarring on the breast of an elderly woman she was attending. The woman told her it was due to the breast cancer she’d been diagnosed with 30 years earlier.

The woman could not afford treatment but met a Native American medicine man who gave her a tea comprising eight herbs. The woman’s cancer went into remission for over 30 years.

Caisse studied the list of herbs in the tea. Months later she was chatting with a retired doctor who remarked that if people used sheep sorrel, there would be a lot less cancer in the world. She noticed that same herb was on the Native American healer’s list.

Caisse first tried the herb combination on her aunt and her mother. The former lived 21 years cancer free after being diagnosed with stomach cancer and given just six months to live. The latter lived 18 years after being diagnosed with inoperable cancer with weeks to live.

Caise opened a cancer clinic and treated thousands of cancer patients for free until 1938, when Canadian authorities compelled her to shut down the Bracebridge Cancer Clinic.

She then became a partner with Dr. Charles Brusch. They treated patients with the same eight-herb tea. Brusch even used it in his own fight against cancer.

Caisse eventually pared the Native American’s formula to four herbs: burdock root, Indian rhubarb root, sheep sorrel, and slippery elm. She named it Essiac, which is Caisse spelled backwards.

Two recent studies have shown that Essiac does combat cancer effectively. One in 2004 showed that Essiac inhibits tumor cell growth - and enhances immune response. The other in 2006 provided more evidence by showing that Essiac increases cytotoxicity towards prostate cancer cells and has huge antioxidant properties.

The tea formula:

• 6.5 cups of burdock root
• 1 lb. of sheep sorrel, powdered
• 0.25 lb. of slippery elm bark, powdered
• 1 oz. of Turkish rhubarb root, powdered

Mix the ingredients and store in a glass jar in a dark cupboard.

Use 1 oz. of herb mixture per 32 ozs. of water. Boil rapidly for 10 minutes (covered). Turn off heat and leave overnight (covered).

In the morning, heat until steaming hot and let settle for three minutes. Strain through a fine strainer into hot sterilized bottles and let cool. Store in a dark, cool cupboard.

Tea must be refrigerated after opening.

Those who do not have healthcare insurance, or do have it and don’t care for toxic Western treatments with delibitating side effects including secondary cancers, have nothing to lose by trying Essiac.

We all deserve the right to choose when our health and lives are on the line.

“I quit being a Christian,” she writes. “In the name of Christ, I refuse to be anti-gay. I refuse to be anti-feminist. I refuse to be anti-artificial birth control. I refuse to be anti-Democrat. I refuse to be anti-secular humanism. I refuse to be anti-science. I refuse to be anti-life…”

What Ms. Rice objects to are not the actual teachings of Jesus, but all the judgments others have attached to his message. Jesus told his followers that God is unconditional love.

Unconditional love  means love without judgments, standards, expectations, or hooks. Unconditional love is love without any limitations. It most emphatically is not the so-called love exhibited by Christian political conservatives. 

Most of those who heard Jesus did not understand him and do not truly comprehend his message even now. Hence they insist on judging and condemning, when Jesus did no such thing, and still claim to be his followers.

Just as radical conservatives hijack and pervert Islam in the Middle East for their theocratic ends, so radical conservatives twist and distort Christianity for similar political goals in this country.

Let us hope that many others become as fed up (and as vocal about it) as Ms. Rice with the unloving, uncharitable words and deeds of the militant Christian right. There is hope yet that this nation will avoid becoming a Christian theocracy, which is the goal of far-right Christian conservatives. 

Apparently the heroine of Green Stone of Healing(R) series has a lot in common with  Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

 Who knew!?

Read it on Unexplained-Mysteries.com and forget the hype.

The show aired live on July 19 on WOON 1240 AM in Southeastern New England and at at www.ONWorldwide.com. This is the link to the podcast.

More information is at www.behindtheparanormal.com.

Go to http://tinyurl.com/2a7kdth for the podcast of the healing past lives show with Candace as the guest of BlogTalk Radio host Cherokee Billie.

Please “like” our book’s page on Facebook. Find it by searching for The Healing Circle. It’s the page with a photo of young people sitting on grass in a circle.

Think of it as technology-enhanced “training wheels” for teen drivers. Those aged 16 to 19 are four times more likely to crash than other drivers.

Who could argue with using technology to keep kids safe? Technology – especially so-called safety technology – has demonstrated unforeseen consequences, however.

“We have never gotten the full benefits of any safety technology ever invented because people have adjusted their behaviors due to these technologies,” says George E. Hoffer, professor of economics at Virginia Commonwealth University. He was speaking to me back in 2007 when I was writing a column for a syndicate that is now The North Star National.

Hoffer has spent four decades studying and writing about what’s called “offsetting behavior” resulting from automobile safety features such as seat belts and air bags. His research has found that when drivers know their cars have safety devices, they tend to behave less responsibly behind the wheel. In other words, safety technology encourages them to be less cautious.

Another term for offsetting behavior is free will. As souls created and endowed with unconditional freedom, we will always find ways around anyone or anything presuming or purporting to save us from ourselves.

Here’s the fly in this ointment. If this magic key keeps teens from learning to make their own judgment calls behind the wheel, what happens when they finally drive a car without the high-tech protections? Will safer driving have become their habit? Or will they be so conditioned to having big brother take care of them that they remain unprepared to assume full responsibility on the road?

We’ll find out in a few years. 

The Healing Circle 

First round voting in the Next Top Spritual Author contest is over. The Healing Circle did not advance to the second round.

Harmony Kephart is the winner of the free, meet-your-angels meditation. Angels, also known as spirit guides, play a special role in the healing circle.

Coauthor Candace L. Talmadge will take Harmony to meet her angels up close and personal, to find out who they are and how they can help her fulfill her spiritual purpose.

Congratulations to Harmony. Our deepest thanks to all voted for our book in this contest.