The Biology of Belief is the title of a recent book by Professor Bruce Lipton. I can hardly speak highly enough of it. Lipton’s breakthrough understandings about how quantum physics governs biological processes may have a similar affect in biology, medicine and pharmaceuticals to what Einstein’s relativity had in physics.

Shockingly, before Lipton — and, even to this day, amongst the vast majority of biologists and medical researchers — the understanding and description of biology is pinned on Newtonian principles rather than quantum ones.

Today’s doctors, biological researchers, and pharmaceutical researchers are still being taught based on a paradigm more suited to the beginning of the 20th century than the beginning of the 21st.

To appreciate how absurd this is, consider one simple fact: Physics is the “master science” describing how the universe works. Other sciences, such as chemistry and biology, have no meaning whatsoever except on a foundation of physics. For example, no organism can defy physics’ law of entropy (which states that all systems lose energy over time unless additional energy is introduced from outside the system).

It’s beyond the scope of this essay to go into full detail of what all this means, but let me share with you a few key findings from Lipton’s research that have been experimentally validated.

Lipton is no quack or fringe person. Far from it: He taught cell biology at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine, and later performed pioneering studies at Stanford University School of Medicine.

He is increasingly being recognized as the father of the new science of “epigenetics,” an offshoot of biology based on the revolutionary, yet empirically defensible, proposition that environment trumps heredity after all.

It’s not that Newtonian-based biology is wrong per se. Indeed, much like Newtonian physics, it has great descriptive and predictive power. Many of the most exciting accomplishments of biological science, such as genetic engineering, can be quite successfully explained using the Newtonian model.

As Dr. Lipton points out, the problem is that in both physics and biology there are areas of application where the Newtonian model is just flat wrong. In such cases, biologists ignorant of this fact do both science and the general public a great disservice.

A prime example is the mechanistic presumption that DNA ALWAYS governs life or, as is commonly taught, genes are destiny.

In the new quantum view, genes might be more accurately conceived as a kind of scaffolding that determines a range of possibilities the ultimate structure can assume. However, there can be enormous variation amongst the actual structures that arise.

Further, what determines this is external environmental factors, including various sorts of energy biologists rarely consider important in the normal behavior of organisms.

Lipton cites a Duke University laboratory experiment in which two mice with identical genetics grow up to have entirely different coloration, size, and even diabetic tendencies. The difference? One group of mothers received a methyl-containing supplement.

Multiple studies have established that genes and combinations of genes have the capacity for a range of expressions into the different proteins constituting an organism. Under certain environmental influences, the genes produce one type of protein or set of proteins. Under other environmental influences, the results are very different.

This can result in organisms ostensibly of the same species that look and behave in very different ways.

Conventional Newtonian biology is taught with the premise that the nucleus of the cell is its “brain.”  However, recent research has established that the nucleus can be removed and the cell can continue to perform all its necessary functions. Other recent research has established that the membrane of the cell is, in fact, where its intelligence resides.

This combined with a new understanding of cell dynamics led to what is perhaps Lipton’s greatest insight: “the cell membrane is a liquid crystal semiconductor with gates and channels.” What makes this so extraordinary is how it compares to the definition of a computer chip: “a chip is a liquid crystal semiconductor with gates and channels.”

In effect, Lipton’s research has established that cell membranes perform the same function in biology that semiconductors perform in electronics!

This has several extraordinary implications. First, both computers and cells are programmable. Second, the programmer is an outside entity or force.

Again, this is not to minimize the importance of genetics or conventional biological understanding of structures such as mitochondria. Rather, it is to say that the living organism is much more plastic and amenable to environmentally-induced changes — even later in life — than conventional biology has believed.

Speaking of beliefs, Lipton cites research indicating that the kinds of thoughts and emotions one harbors actually translate into physiological effects. (The esteemed Dr. Candace Pert of Georgetown University has done work with neuropeptides showing the same thing, but never put it into an overarching theory as Lipton has done.)

Grab The Biology of Belief, read it and think about it. It includes important information about how to live your life successfully and reduce your risk of chronic disease. It also indicates where the whole field of biology is going. Speaking of success, I’ll be watching for start up companies based on applied quantum biology that we can invest in.

To your profitable future,

Jonathan Kolber
September 13, 2006

Quantum Biology was originally featured in the Penny Sleuth.