Psychosocial factors, cancer, and ischaemic heart disease.

Pelosi and Appleby recently criticised the extensive work of Ronald Grossarth-Maticek on psychosocial factors in the development of cancer and coronary heart disease, which began in the 'sixties and with which I have been associated during the past eight years.'Constructive criticism is always welcome, but Pelosi and Appleby's paper had several faults which make it difficult to accept it as an objective account of what has been done, what is claimed, and what has been offered as evidence.The important hypotheses investigated in the studies are listed in the box.Good evidence exists to support all these points, which find their theoretical basis in Sir William Osler's famous statement that it is often more important to know what person has the disease than what disease the person has.I have written a book presenting the evidence.6Furthermore, there is independent evidence on most of these points, so that though Grossarth-Maticek's hypotheses were largely original when he started the studies in the 'sixties, they would now be considered commonplace.I will come back to this point later on.Poor criticisms Pelosi and Appleby suggest that description of methods, analyses, and results have been patchy and scattered widely "in obscure or unreferenced journals."'Among these obscure or unreferenced journals are the Deutsche Zeitschrift fur Onkologie, the Jfournal of Psychosomatic Research, Social Science and Medicine, Cancer Detection and Prevention, and the