Press Release: April 8, 2009

The Pancreatic Cancer Project
"Medication or Mediation?"

Several years ago, Karen Holmes wrote a letter to the editor of the Curry Coastal Pilot [Brookings, Oregon] requesting that anyone who had pancreatic cancer, or knew someone who had it, to contact her to prove a theory. Eleven people responded.

What motivated the letter was three dear friends had passed away within two years of each other of pancreatic cancer, and she realized that all three had similar crises in their life.

As a dental hygienist for many years, it was Holmes's responsibility to take patient's medical histories, and then to counsel the patient on their dental diseases. She began to correlate the patient's medical problems with issues going on in their life. Patients with a minor tissue pathology, called lichen planus, had similar mindsets about resolving issues, and even on the cellular level demonstrated the mindset. She observed that women who are fighting breast cancer have issues related to nurturing.

To make the connection for pancreatic cancer will have a profound impact on how cancer is diagnosed and treated. Pancreatic cancer is a horrific disease, and 99% fatal.

Holmes's theory cannot be proven in a laboratory, so she wrote the letter to the editor, and was delighted to find that all eleven responses confirmed the theory.

Holmes has gone forward with a plan, "The Pancreatic Cancer Project." She has created a blog and discussion forum to draw in more case histories, and has added a Crisis Resolution/Pancreatic Cancer section to her webpage. She will turn over documentation to doctors to carry the theory forward. She is setting up a series of classes, called, "Getting Out of the Abyss," to teach people how to deal with their issues. In the future, she hopes to create a healing arts center to deal with the issues themselves, including conflict resolution and mediation.