Another post drawn from a speech given to the Olympic Club:
In 2004, my sister, Adrien, then 60, was discovered to be harboring shadowy growths in both lungs. Yet she is with us still, unscarred and unirradiated. How did that work?
A bronchoscopy and pet-scan confirmed that those shadows
were living tissues and growing. A needle biopsy was deemed too risky in such a
blood vessel-rich area, so surgery was scheduled for some weeks hence. Her St. Petersburg (FL) surgeon planned to open her
up through her back, sample tissue on the spot, and proceed as pathology indicated.
Before surgery, Adrien
wisely sought a second opinion from the Mayo Clinic branch in Jacksonville where
worked a highly regarded radiologist with a track record of tricky, image-guided needle biopsies. She sent her history and images. She, the radiologist, counseled proceeding with a needle biopsy.
A couple of weeks later, in Jacksonville, Adrien was laid out on the bed of a cat-scan. Long pause. I imagine the conversation went something like:
Adrien: What’s up?
She: “Well, ah, I don’t know.”
Adrien twisted around to look at her lung image on the screen. It was clear. They look clear she said;
“Yes, it looks clear” replied the Doc. “Sometimes miracles happen.”
Adrien understood; six weeks earlier, when the shadowy growths had first shown up on her X-rays, Adrien had alerted the Prayer Warriors, a prayer chain at her St. Pete church. She had also shared her news with friends in Virginia and at her old church in Washington, DC. Throughout the mid-Atlantic and South, many people, friends and strangers, had been praying for her. She knew how the growths were cleared away.
As for me, at that time, I did not believe in prayer
nor in a God that interceded in peoples’ lives, despite the many tales we hear of such miracles. But, but this was
my sister!
I didn’t become a believer, for I had studied
under behaviorists and placed my confidence in “science.” but at least I had to suspend my disbelief. I suppose that made
me an Agnostic -- a wondering one for the next twenty years.
Toggle forward to today.
Last month, Shawn, an Iranian-American friend of mine, a Baha’i, brought to my attention The Biology of Belief, by Bruce Lipton. Lipton is a cell biologist whose pioneering work at Stanford has challenged what Kuhn in his The Structure of Scientific Revolutions calls a "paradigm of normal science," in this case the paradigm that genes control our cells and are immutable. What Lipton and other epigeneticists have been demonstrating over the last twenty-five years or so is how genes are switched on or off under direction of mechanisms in cell membranes.
Every cell in your body, all 30 trillion of them, contains roughly 46,500 genes arranged on 46 chromosomes, half from Mom and half from Dad. Each cell’s membrane has on it a variety of receptors that respond to various environmental stimuli, as pressure or heat or chemical or whatever. Some 20,000 of those genes are coding genes, that is, capable of telling the cell what protein to produce to meet the environmental condition a controlling receptor in the cell membrane has encountered. As Lipton puns it, the nucleus is not the “brain” of a cell, but its "mem-brain" is. This is not theory; this epigeneticists worldwide are showing us.
Lipton’s aha moment came when he realized that epigeneticists were
limiting themselves to classic Newtonian mechanics when looking at membrane receptors. What about quantum mechanics? Are receptors
responsive to energy force fields
or electromagnetic emanations? The answer is yes.
Now, I’m getting way
out of my depth here, but bear with
me. Brain wave researchers are showing us that conscious thinking generates electromagnetic forces, as does the subconscious; brain wave research is a hot area now. Epigenetics researchers are showing us
that thought can trigger changes in cells. New evidence suggests that thoughts of the mother can influence behavior of the cells of the
fetus in her womb. Some research is suggesting that
epigenetic markers on cells are heritable, capable of being passed on to succeeding generations. This challenge to the Mendelian paradigm
is revolutionary. Even more challenging to the classic view that thought and
biology are separate realms is that we are being shown that thought, i.e., beliefs, and biology are inseparable – a mind/body
continuum.
Lipton carries his
thinking way forward to conclusions that normal science geneticist are not ready to adopt: that the mind-body continuum is in control
of life; that beliefs are the realm of the spirit; that subconscious and conscious thought can be trained and
practiced and can change your health and body mechanics. These
conclusions turn normal science’s paradigms on their heads. Kuhn's “normal,” mainstream scientists are not yet embracing what Lipton calls “the new biology.”
Back to Adrien: Lipton, I thnk, would say prayers of others did not clear Adrien’s
lungs, but Adrien’s belief in the efficacy of those prayers switched on and charged up her immune system to attack and destroy the growths
invading her lungs. He would say it was her belief, not others' prayers, that created “the miracle.” (BTW: Adrien and my son Steve would disagree. Maybe that's the point: one or the other works.)
Lipton's Biology of Belief has given me the rationale with which to restore my disbelief in miracles and in an interceding God. Do I know that prayers don't work or that there is no intercessionery God? No, but I believe so. I am again a full-on Agnostic if not an Atheist. But thanks to Lipton, I now grasp and have more reason than ever to be awed by the power of the mind – of your mind and
mine -- the mind-body continuum with power to respond in miraculous ways to the opportunities
and dangers of the mysterious world around us.
Miracles? No. Miraculous? Yes, indeed.
PS Adrien previewed this and somewhat reluctantly allowed me to publish. She reminded me that 40% of placebos work; perhaps that is what we should be researching.
