The Institute of Noetic Sciences (IONS) debuted the Spontaneous Remission Database during the ConnectIONS Live event, Spontaneous Remission: From Medical Mystery to Scientific Tool.
For decades, spontaneous remissions have existed at the edges of medicine: documented, debated, and often dismissed as anomalies rather than explored as clues. Yet within these rare cases may lie patterns that could reshape how we understand cancer, healing, and what the human body is capable of.
At IONS, we take these cases seriously—not as miracles to prove, but as phenomena worth investigating with rigorous scientific attention.
What Is Spontaneous Remission?
Spontaneous remission is defined as:
The disappearance, complete or incomplete, of a disease or cancer without medical treatment or treatment that is considered inadequate to produce the resulting disappearance of disease symptoms or tumor.
At first glance, the term “spontaneous remission” could be misinterpreted to mean that instantaneous healing is possible; however, this is not how the term is used in medical literature. The term “spontaneous” is used when a patient shows a significantly measurable reduction in tumor size, or a reversal in the progression of a disease, and when this improvement cannot be attributed to Western allopathic medical treatment.
See other frequently asked questions about Spontaneous Remission.
A Legacy of Research
In 1993, the Institute of Noetic Sciences published Spontaneous Remission: An Annotated Bibliography. Because there was no standard reference for the field before that time, the Remission Project cataloged the world’s medical literature on the subject.
The resulting book was the largest database of medically reported cases of spontaneous remission in the world at the time, with references collected from more than 800 journals in 20 different languages.
A New Searchable Resource
The new Spontaneous Remission Database, led by IONS Fellow Dr. Joshua Weiss and IONS Scientist Garret Yount, continues the earlier work as a searchable resource. It preserves the original bibliography while extending it with newly identified cases through 2025. It has been created for both clinicians and patients.
Within these rare cases may lie patterns that could reshape how we understand cancer, healing, and what the human body is capable of.
