Miracle Message from Down Under
An educational opportunity of a lifetime!
Great students, great school, great country! A joyous snapshot revealing the happy teacher (me) and the “awakened” students of New Zealand College of Chiropractic (NZCC) who will soon be helping heal our world. (March 23, 2006)
Why Chiropractic?
Those readers familiar with my scientific background and research interests are keenly aware that my conventional academic pursuits were intimately entwined with the philosophy and practice of allopathic medicine. I am honored and proud to have been a teacher and/or researcher at a number of acclaimed academic institutions, including The University of Virginia, The University of Wisconsin’s School of Medicine, Stanford University’s School of Medicine, The University of Puerto Rico’s School of Medicine and Penn State University. At each of these institutions, the focus of my work was on understanding the mechanisms of the allopathic medical model of health, a model that emphasized that the body was a “biochemical machine controlled by genes.”
However, through my research on cloned stem cells I began to realize that the cellular and molecular concepts I was teaching to my medical students as to how life worked, were fundamentally flawed. My published research unambiguously revealed that genes did not control life, but rather our biology and behavior are primarily determined by our perceptions of the world.
Logic suggests that the effectiveness of any healing practice would be directly related to the validity of its underlying science. While we are clearly aware of the miracles of modern medicine, we have turned a blind eye on the fact that allopathic medicine has become the leading cause of death in the United States (see Death by Medicine at www.garynull.com). In spite of the fact that science has been operating under some profoundly distorted view of how life works, its reductionist approach has provided for the miracles of modern medicine. Countless lives have been saved through the expertise of allopathic physicians in removing and replacing parts, as well as reassembling and reconstructing mangled bodies. If you break your bones, need a new heart or your hernia repaired; allopathic medicine would be your ideal destination.
The medical profession’s preoccupation with the physical characters of life has made them masters of trauma medicine. Medical science has become very familiar with the mechanical interactions of the body’s parts, such as “the knee bone connects to the thighbone.” However, as revealed in the dismal healthcare statistics, medicine has no real comprehension as to how those parts actually work.
In regard to the body’s parts and pieces, medical doctors are superb mechanics. In the “old” days, mechanics were very clever people who could take apart devices such as cars, radios or watches, understand the nature of the interaction of their parts and make the appropriate repairs. However in today’s world of manufactured cars, radios and watches, the operational mechanisms are so complex that the average technician is not really able to make manual repairs. Rather than repairing mechanisms, today technicians simply replace “modules.” For example, my computer’s hard drive recently “went down.” When I brought it to the specialist, the resolution was simple, discard the old drive and replace it with a new one. I lost all of my data, since as the specialist remarked, “We just don’t repair those things.”
While cardiologists may have no understanding as to why a heart has failed, they miraculously can cut it out and transplant another one. But wouldn’t it be more effective if medical practitioners knew how the heart worked so that we could have insight into preventing its failure? It is now becoming apparent that most human illness and suffering is not related to physical trauma, but instead represents the consequence of stress-induced physiologic or cellular dysfunctions. While conventional medicine can identify and manipulate the body’s defective parts, its preoccupation with a search for gene control mechanisms has provided no real understanding of how those body parts actually “work” or are regulated.
My research on cellular intelligence systems clearly revealed that the cell’s behavior and genetic expression were directly influenced by information derived from the environment. Protein perception units found in the cell membrane mediate the informational interface between the cells and their environmental milieu. Rather than a bottom-up philosophy in which genes within the cell control life, the new awareness revealed a top-down philosophy, wherein the nervous system (perceptions and mind) control genes.
This new philosophy of life is in direct contrast to the medical world’s perception that we are “victims” of our genes and biochemistry, a belief that supports the notion that health is outside of our control. However, current science emphasizes that dis-ease is not derived from inherent defects within the machine, but are created in response to the way we carryout our lives.
Perhaps my meaning may be best understood with this analogy. I sell you my 4-speed stick-shift Pontiac…but you really don’t know how to drive a car with a manual transmission. After the deal is done, I give you the keys and you drive away, the car lurching and bucking. Several days later you call and tell me the car is “sick,” it has a bad clutch. You bring the car to the mechanic, and after a quick physical diagnosis, he comes to the same conclusion: the car is suffering from clutch dysfunction and requires a clutch transplant. A new clutch is purchased from the parts dealer (the equivalent of the automotive pharmacy) and installed.
Two weeks later, you return to the car doctor and surprisingly are having a relapse, for the new clutch is now failing. The mechanic examines the car and reveals that you are apparently experiencing chronic clutch dysfunction and need another transplant. This process is repeated every few weeks and you have resigned to the fact that your vehicle is a lemon and that is your fate in life. From the perspective of the mechanic’s, the problem is derived from a physical failure inherent in the vehicle. This is the same general conclusion derived by allopathic medicine, that human health dysfunctions are derived from a physical failure inherent within the vehicle, in this case, the human body.
Research from leading edge cellular biology offer conclusions that differ from conventional allopathic philosophy. While the new science still perceives of the physical body as mechanical vehicle, it incorporates the role and influence of a “driver,” the mind. Using our analogy of a car and a dysfunctional clutch, the new science would resolve the issue as follows: the mechanic will repair the clutch and then “educate” the driver by teaching them how to drive standard shift. Consequently, we would see that the problem was not with the vehicle, but with the driver!
While cardiovascular disease maybe attributed to a bad “pump,” the new science suggests that the primary cause of the problem is the “driver” and not the heart! The published research of San Francisco heart surgeon, Dean Ornish, specifically addresses this issue. Rather than treating cardiac patient’s heart with a regimen of drugs, Ornish taught his patients better life skills, such as how to more effectively deal with stress, how to meditate and how to eat healthier. To the surprise of the medical world, the cardiac degeneration in Ornish’s patients not only stopped, but his patients were even able to regenerate damaged tissue, an outcome that has not been experienced under conventional treatment protocols.
Interestingly, in spite of Ornish’s success, his work is not supported by conventional medicine, since its premise does not conform to the conventional medical philosophy of a gene-controlled biology. Though his research has convincingly revealed that driver “re-education” can maintain the cardiac health of patients, standard medical practice down plays personal responsibility in matters of health and still pushes pills as the solution to all of our problems.
My cell research revealed that our mind, via our perceptions, controlled gene expression and behavior. Upon becoming aware of this information I had to leave conventional academia, simply because I felt out of integrity in teaching the dogma of genetic determinism and the implication of our “victimization” by the body and its cells. Pat Gaymon, a dean at Life Chiropractic College West, heard my presentation on the new biology and invited me to present a lecture in philosophy at Life College. I was totally surprised by her request, for as an allopathic research scientist, I truly had no notion of what was postulated in chiropractic philosophy.
In response to her suggestion, I reviewed the 1895 edition of The Science, Art and Philosophy of Chiropractic, by D. D. Palmer, the founder of chiropractic. Though I had to muddle though the thick verbiage characteristic of authors in the 1800’s, I was completely taken by surprise, for Palmer’s philosophy was almost identical to what I had learned from my stem cell experiments. Even though Palmer’s work preceded Einstein’s seminal research by 10 years, it emphasized the role energy vibrations, harmonics, and signal transduction in the operation of the human body…information that is still not fully understood in modern medicine. Rather than blaming dysfunctions on the body, Palmer recognized that our biology is capable of self-healing, that dis-ease was not an inherent consequence of a fragile biology. Chiropractic emphasized that dysfunctions are primarily attributable to trauma, toxins and thought. Through adjusting the patient’s spine and re-educating them in regard to their beliefs about nutrition and behavior (ala Dean Ornish), we are capable of experiencing a healthy, productive and prosperous existence.
While I wholeheartedly endorse allopathic medicine in dealing with trauma or the exchanging of bodily parts, I have come to realize that preventative medicine, in the form of good healthcare, is not forthcoming from a health modality that perceives of us frail biochemical robots programmed by genes. In contrast, the philosophy of chiropractic honors the “driver,” the spirit that controls the physiology. By recognizing the role of the nervous system over the operation of the body, as well as the impact of our education in the unfoldment of health, chiropractic offers us profound, non-pharmacological insight into how to live a healthy and happy life.
Why the New Zealand College of Chiropractic?
As science evolves from its current preoccupation with chemical therapy, there will be a greater need for health professionals that can offer the public a more scientific, yet spiritual, understanding of life. This is why I see a continued successful expansion of the chiropractic community. Yet in the face of this awesome future, the chiropractic profession is beset by a serious problem. In spite of, and perhaps because of, the obvious powerful and positive influence that chiropractic care has upon its patients, the militant arm of the world’s medical associations has continuously attacked chiropractors.
Conventional science has continuously ignored the claims of chiropractic, since the presumed healing process does not employ “mechanisms” that are recognized by allopathic philosophy. With the hope of attaining fraternal recognition by their allopath brothers, chiropractic has had to distance itself from its founding principles. Palmer’s philosophy invoked the role of God, spirit and mind in the control of life. Clearly these concepts are not recognized in the conventional mechanistic philosophy adopted by Western medicine. In fact, such concepts are specifically relegated to the realm of metaphysics. Over the years, chiropractic has continuously modified its metaphysical philosophy and practice to become more “evidence-based,” meaning, more “acceptable” in terms of the allopathic model.
Consequently, there has been a pressure on chiropractic colleges to de-emphasize their philosophy programs in an effort to become more “scientific.” Unfortunately, this is tantamount to “throwing the baby out with the bathwater.” In the absence of the understanding provided by Palmer’s philosophy, many conventional chiropractors have been led to believe that the heart of the chiropractic healing modality is the physical adjustment. This mechanical-based focus enables chiropractic to conform to the physical model of life defined by allopathic philosophy.
Of course the joke to me is, “Why would anyone try so hard to be recognized by a healing modality that is the leading cause of death in the United States?” As logic suggests, with that rate of mortality, something important is obviously missing in the allopathic philosophy. Current cell and molecular biology research is now revealing what has been missing in medical philosophy, and in the process, is precipitating a revolution in conventional science. New insights provided in the fields of epigenetics, evolution mechanisms and quantum physics, collectively emphasize the role of energy, environment and mind in controlling life. What was metaphysical is now becoming “science.” In fact, the “new” science is a virtual readout of the old chiropractic philosophy!
This spring I was honored to be a visiting lecturer at the NZCC in Auckland. I am so very appreciative of this opportunity, for I was afforded the chance to participate in what I feel is an extraordinary evolutionary advance in academia. The aim of most institutions of higher learning with which I have been involved is to “educate” students by downloading massive quantities of formation into their brain in discrete packets, called courses. Success of the venture is primarily revealed in the distribution of grades acquired by the graduating students.
Over the years the average grades of students have steadily risen (grade inflation), yet the performance and capabilities of graduates has concomitantly decreased. I believe this reflects a fundamental problem with contemporary education strategies, which are top heavy with learning facts and fundamentally devoid in training students how to think and be creative. As is emphasized in the new biology described in The Biology of Belief: Unleashing the Power of Consciousness, Matter and Miracles, the limiting beliefs we hold about ourselves, as well as our abilities to succeed, are pretty much programmed into our subconscious minds before we reach the age of six. Consequently, educating the conscious mind with facts and not re-educating the limiting and sabotaging beliefs programmed into, what chiropractic refers to as, the Educated (subconscious) Mind, in the end does not fully support the student nor our world.
Among chiropractic schools, the NZCC is unique in that it emphasizes Chiropractic Philosophy to be more than an academic course…it is a way of life. The College’s Board of Directors and its president, Brian Kelly, are pioneering visionaries and innovative academicians in that they have made it their responsibility to help their students grow into the role of healers rather than just providing them with techniques and patient skills. In a true sense, the NZCC is helping to heal the healers through enhancing their life skills as well as their commitment to providing them with leading edge science.
The New Zealand College of Chiropractic offers its students a wonderful blend of mind, body and spirit wisdom in a direct hands-on academic environment. Unlike the Darwinian survival of the fittest, dog-eat-dog mentality, that characterizes the competition among medical students; The NZCC has cultivated a mutual respect and caring amongst the students that will surely contribute greatly to their careers as compassionate healers in the world. As a lecturer, I was thoroughly impressed by the closely-knit community formed by the students, and even more so, by the dedication and camaraderie displayed among the school’s young and enthusiastic faculty. Though I have been involved with a number of large and prestigious universities, I believe none has provided a more nurturing academic environment than NZCC. One of the most revealing attributes of the school’s excellence is reflected in the fact that its graduates still express all the excitement about their career choice as they expressed as students on their first day of school.
And of course, there is the fact that this school is located in New Zealand, one of the most beautiful, peaceful and healthy countries in the world. I can readily understand how visionaries such as Edgar Cayce and Buckminister Fuller prophesied that New Zealand would serve as the model community for the world’s future evolution. The nurturing New Zealand life style, which is reflected in the reduced stress on both its citizens and its environment, is palpable. Margaret and I truly found it difficult to leave the serenity of NZ and return to the States…but we are blessed, for we have been invited back to Paradise next year.
So, why chiropractic? Because it is a proven, effective health modality that is philosophically in alignment with leading edge modern science.
Why NZCC? Simply because the school provides a superb academic environment that is evolving along with the community of its graduates. The world is in desperate need of healing and I feel the graduates of NZCC will be a powerful force in bringing wholeness to our world. If you are considering a career in healthcare or know someone who is, I unreservedly recommend that The New Zealand College of Chiropractic, for it is the prototypic model for the future of academia.
