THE VOLANTIS
Cala De Pena (Cove of the Dog)
What if the greatest cure for human illness wasn't a pill, a shot, or a complex surgical procedure, but an idea? What if we could engineer a person’s belief system to cure their own disease?
You've heard of the placebo effect. We all have. A patient with a fake sugar pill feels better because they believe it’s a real drug. It sounds like magic, but it’s a measurable, physiological response. For decades, it’s been the quiet, embarrassing footnote in every drug trial, a variable to be accounted for, a nuisance to be eliminated.
But for a small, brilliant team at the Center for Psychoneuroimmunology at UCLA, it was the opposite. For them, it was the answer. They spent their lives proving the mind’s profound and quantifiable effect on the body's immune system. They published countless studies, presented at conferences, and won prestigious grants, all to show that a person's thoughts and emotions could be the deciding factor between sickness and health.
This book is about what happens when one of those researchers, a man of pure conviction and quiet courage, decides to take the next step. It is about a protocol he developed to move beyond the placebo's random, accidental effects. It was a way to harness it, to amplify it, to direct it with the precision of a laser. It was a cocktail of drugs designed not to kill a disease, but to convince the mind to do it on its own.
Now, that’s a dangerous idea.
In this country, medicine is a multi-trillion-dollar industry. A cure that works for free is a direct threat to their bottom line. It’s a threat to pharmaceutical companies, insurance giants, and every corporation that profits from the endless cycle of treatment. They don’t like problems. And in their world, a man with an idea like this is a very big problem. They have their own way of dealing with things, a cold and ruthless process that operates far outside the headlines.
This is a work of fiction, but you'll probably find it's more non-fiction than you thought. It’s the story of one man’s brave idea and the powerful forces that try to kill it. It’s about a legacy that refuses to be buried and a daughter who must now fight a war she never asked for.
What would you risk to prove that believing is healing?