The diet consists of approximately 50 percent cooked whole grains - brown rice, wheat, barley and millet, to name a few - as well as 25 percent locally grown vegetables, 15 percent beans and sea vegetables, and the remainder taken up by fish, soup, condiments, fruit, seeds and nuts. McLean later sent the doctor a book, “A Macrobiotic Approach to Cancer,” containing many testimonials from cancer patients who insisted their tumors gradually shrank and eventually disappeared after adopting a strict macrobiotic diet. There he could learn how to prepare a macrobiotic diet, which McLean insisted had “cured” many forms of cancer. Sattilaro to stop in at the Philadelphia East-West Foundation, which was then located at 820 South St. Here I was, a doctor for 25 years and the director of a Philadelphia hospital with lots of cancer specialists who had done everything they could possibly do for me, and nothing could arrest the spread of my cancer.”

Sattilaro, “and thought he was just a silly kid. The youthful hitchhiker remarked, “You do not have to die. “I guess I just needed somebody to talk to.” When the prominent physician told the young men that his father had just died and that he himself had been given a cancerous death sentence, McLean made a comment which Sattilaro told me saved his life. “It was a spur of the moment decision,” he told me. Sattilaro picked up two young hitchhikers - Sean McLean and Bill Bochbracher - who were on their way to North Carolina. 9, the deeply depressed physician was driving down the New Jersey Turnpike to Philly when a miracle occurred.Īlthough it was completely out of character for him, Dr. After burying his dad in Highland Park, NJ, on Aug. Two months later, tragedy struck again as Dr. Sattilaro was told he had about one year to live. Three operations, huge quantities of oral drugs and large doses of estrogen, a female hormone, failed to arrest the cancerous spread. In June of 1978, he told me, X-rays revealed that he had cancerous growths in his skull, right shoulder, prostate, backbone, sternum and genitals. Sattilaro in February of 1981 when he was 48 and the president of Methodist Hospital (where I was born) in South Philadelphia. Anthony Sattilaro is definitely at or near the very top. Since I have been a full-time reporter/editor for almost 50 years, once in a while someone will ask me who is the most compelling or unforgettable person I have ever interviewed and written about. Sattilaro’s book, “Living Well Naturally,” one of two he wrote about overcoming cancer, was a best-seller in the 1980s.

Recalled by life by anthony j sattilaro