Cancer Doctor Reveals How He Beat the Odds When He Became a Patient Himself

Dr. Gary Onik was dubbed “Dr. Hope” for his pioneering treatment for prostate cancer, and now he’s opening up about battling the disease himself.

“Extra” Senior Executive Producer Lisa Gregorisch-Dempsey spoke with Dr. Onik, who believes science and prayer saved him.

Dr. Onik, a Harvard-trained cancer scientist and specialist, is an adjunct professor of mechanical engineering at Carnegie Mellon who was diagnosed with terminal prostate cancer in 2018. The disease had spread to his lymph nodes and bones and he told Lisa, “It was a 100 percent fatal diagnosis… I knew that I would be dying.”

The doctor turned to his faith, which started with a patient who called for prayer and was later cured.

Dr. Onik said of his own faith, “I started to look at this as a scientist to see if there is a basis for this… and there is no question based on the science quantum theory that we’re all connected… So if you have a quantum basis and you know your consciousness can affect things, then certainly there is a basis for prayer to affect things.”

He credits his call for prayers from family, friends, and former patients with helping him through his cancer fight, and incredibly, he never took his doctor’s hat off even when he went in for surgery.

In fact, Dr. Onik was awake and guided another doctor through his own operation. He said, “I had this treatment that I knew was curing people, but I was the only one who knew how to do it, so I was kind of stuck.”

He believes in chemo and radiation along with his trailblazing new treatment he’s developing to fight cancer. “There isn’t a cancer we’ve found that doesn’t respond to it, and it is an immunologic approach. We hope that in the next year or two years that this will be an accepted treatment for prostate cancer and then we can go and treat all sorts of cancer with it.”

Lisa also shared her very personal reason for wanting to interview Dr. Onik, explaining that her husband Gary had a curable cancer, which returned in 2019 with a nodule in his lung. They turned to prayer and she said, “I truly believe prayer and God saved my husband.”