Part 1
CAM and modern medicine

CAM (complementary and alternative medicine) offers the public a variety of healing modalities based upon the knowledge of societies and cultures that predate our western cultures by perhaps thousands of years. Many of the treatments of these ancient practices have come down to us as the folk medicine that was often used by our parents and grandparents. These include such simple things as the ingestion of cod liver oil for the digestion, garlic for the immune system, and sulfur and iodine as antibiotics. The popular and widely used drug aspirin was adopted from Native American tribes, which gathered and used the white substance under the bark of the aspen tree to treat a variety of ailments.

Western medicine and CAM both use chemicals in their treatments and methods, the difference being that Western medicine uses methods that are based on the study of the effects of specific chemicals, while ancient medicines prescribe plant substances whose effects have been studied for years and are part of its ancient methods. Many of the techniques of CAM have been handed down through oral traditions, but many also have been written down and constitute a body of literature similar to those of modern medicine.

While many forms of ancient healing techniques are passed on verbally, Chinese medicine has an extensive literature. One of its techniques, pulsing, is used to diagnose the general health of individuals. Pulsing (the taking of the pulse) is based on a belief that information as to a person’s health can be sensed in the beat of their pulse. In taking the pulse, medical practitioners feel for three different beats. While pulsing is not generally used by western trained doctors, it is by doctors in China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong, where it is part of their training. In these countries, computer software has been developed to analyze the beat of the pulse, and it is used in conjunction with the sensing capabilities of the practitioner to diagnose patients.

The sciences behind western medicine are biochemistry and microbiology. The former studies the organic chemicals that make up cells and account for their reactions, while the latter studies how chemicals function inside cells. Chemistry uses quantitative analysis of experimental data to determine chemical composition, and qualitative analysis to determine the nature and effects of chemicals when they react. When specific chemicals are present in the blood, for instance, quantitative analysis can be used to predict specific pathological conditions. Sometimes, however, the presence of specific chemicals does not indicate a specific condition, but only a tendency for one, in which case a more comprehensive qualitative analysis must be undertaken before the state of health can be determined.

There is little doubt that with a vast array of scientific methods and equipment at its disposal, western medicine has evolved into a powerful tool for healing. However, it still has not discovered the body’s master computer, its information program that integrates all of its functions into a single functioning whole. Nor has modern medicine discovered the basis of life itself, or how hydrocarbon chemicals obtain this unique and incredible quality. This then leaves the door open for complementary and alternative medicines, which offer not only specific diagnoses and treatment of diseases, but also a theory of life.

Part 2
New physics and CAM

"By what force is matter motivated to life?" This question has been asked by many in their search for the scientific basis for the phenomenon of life. Modern science either ignores the question of what makes things alive, or says that life is an innate property of the assembly of simple molecules into complex molecules such as proteins and lipids. Then the complex molecules assemble themselves into components we recognize as living cells. The coding sequences of the DNA template are the set of blueprints that first assembles molecules and then guides them into their proper positions in the cell’s structure. These coding sequences control the entire process of cell building.

Scientists believe that the cell’s DNA endows proteins with a specific structure (called conformation) and this structure ensures that they will only bind to each other in specific patterns. Once bonded, proteins exchange smaller chemical units known as radicals, and it is these that produce the chemistry of cells. This may explain the structure of cells and why molecules react in specific patterns within them, but it does not explain other things. For example, why do the cell’s chemical reactions occur in precise sequences in time? Or, do the cells have a built-in artificial intelligence that allows them to perform a variety of complex tasks, such as recognizing foreign cells and destroying them? Also, chemical properties do not explain why cells divide into new cells. This capacity to divide is important: it distinguishes living from non-living things. Nor can chemical properties alone explain fully either why or how billions of individual cells are precisely assembled into organs that carry out complex functions vital to the body.

The current scientific argument for the basis of life is not very satisfying and, without an underlying theory, it is more like a belief rather than a scientific fact. Complementary medical systems and practices, on the other hand, almost always come with their own theories, or at least ideas, about the nature of life. As is the case with science, most of these ideas and theories are based on belief rather than scientific evidence, however, they are as adequate (some would argue more adequate) a world view as the ones that science has developed to explain the basis of life.

Modern science believes in a mechanistic theory of life, while most ancient cultures believe in either a God, or Gods, or a force that produces life. Chinese medicine illustrates the differences between the belief systems of east and west, particularly the contrast between CAM and modern medicine. Chinese medicine takes the view that the physical functioning of cells is based on the flow of substance called "chi." Chi, and its ability to flow through the body, is responsible for the health of all organisms. If sufficient chi doesn’t flow through the body and its cells, the health of the body is compromised. On the other hand, if chi flows unimpeded through the body, health is good. Chi then is a sustaining "life force." Possibly the most popular Chinese medical practice is that of acupuncture. While emphasizing the practice of balancing the body’s natural energies, this practice is based on the flow of chi through the body’s acupuncture points, and throughout the acupuncture system.

Modern science has done little to discover the physical basis for chi. A few scientists, however, have performed experiments that suggest the existence of chi, or something like it. Most of these experiments involve the most common substance found in living things—water. It has been shown that small changes in the physical characteristics of water, such as its pH (acid - alkaline balance), can be changed by exposing the water to the thoughts and intentions of individuals.1  More startling perhaps are subjective experiments that have shown that the quality and taste of fluid foods such as wines and juices can be improved using similar techniques.2  The results of these and other experiments have led the scientists who performed them to propose the existence of a new form of energy that is similar to chi in behavior and properties. Called "bio-energy," or "subtle" energy, this energy (if it is energy) is a natural part of the functioning of living things, and can be used to influence the behavior of molecules found in other living things.

Bio-energy carries very little actual energy. There is evidence, for instance, that very weak photon (light) emissions are emanating from living things.3  It is only a small step to propose that the light from living cells may provide the means of communication between and among cells. From this theoretical point of view, when people project their bio-energy, they project light which carries information to other cells. The molecules and atoms of the other cells then absorb that projected light. The light these cells receive then changes both the physical structure and characteristics of the cell’s molecules. This theorized sequence of events would result in operational changes or transformation for the cell.

Support for the existence of a life force substance is rooted in the belief that life cannot be explained without it. The phenomenon of life is far too complex, too diverse, while at the same time too precise, to be explained by randomly occurring biochemical reactions. The life of a single cell is sustained by thousands of chemical reactions that occur in precise sequences through time. These sequences control the cell’s metabolism, its immune responses, and its ability to divide into an identical cell. The scientific basis for the sequencing of the chemical reactions to control life processes is not known. Thousands of specific chemicals and chemical reactions with many different functions and purposes have been identified inside the walls of living cells. Taken as a whole they account for cell biology, but when taken separately they define nothing except a large collection of separate reactions. How then are they organized into a precise program that sustains the life of an organism?

Because of the reasons cited above, there must be an unknown factor in cells that controls both their intracellular (inside one cell) operation and intercellular (between cells) operation, and integrates and coordinates the two into a common program of operation. The source of the information for this may lie in the DNA, where there are sequences of nucleic acids with unidentified functions, or it may lie inside a field of biological information not discovered by science.

Current research into the effects and origins of bio-energy are in their nascent stages. When science recognizes bio-energy and its effects as a real phenomenon, research will increase and intensify. Until that time, it is likely that the state of modern medicine was best summed up by a medical doctor I met several years ago. As we were discussing the origins of the body’s biochemical activity as a key to understanding all life, he said, "No one knows where the body’s master computer is, the one that controls its chemistry."

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1. Tiller, Dibble, Kohane, Conscious Acts of Creation, the Emergence of a New Physics, Pavior Publishing, Cal., 2001, pp. 70 - 94.

2. Vogel, Marcel, "PRI Newsletter," vol. 5, #1, "The Finishing of Wine with Crystal Technology."

3. Popp, Fritz, "Optical Coherence of Biological Systems," J. BEMI, vol.2, #4.