Biology
A Drug For Everything?
It seems like that is the way that we are headed. Clearly, there's an alarming trend toward medicalizing everything, even personality, and then making nearly every aspect of the human condition "treatable". Looked at from this standpoint, this is appalling. I believe strongly that people need to look deep within themselves and deal with what they find. Taking pills to cure a gambling problem keeps people from doing that. And, of course, it won't work. I hate the ads for drugs. They are creating conditions and then creating cures. It's madness.
But, I do feel that there are situations where the pharmaceutical industry has made important strides in saving human lives. It's not a very popular viewpoint, especially in the non-western health world, but I thank God for things like the polio vaccine having heard about my parents' lives as kids, and seeing pictures of gymanasiums filled with kids in iron lungs. It's easy to say, well we need to be comfortable with letting go. But, I feel very deeply the fundamental human impulse to heal and preserve lives. (I am pro-choice). Each person is truly precious, and if the pharmaceutical industry can come up with cures for things like polio, leukemia, other cancers, I'm all for it.
Raising Levels of Dopamine in Ourselves
Apparently, we can increase levels of dopamine in our brains if we think we are being injected with its precursors. I'm not surprised. It's been shown time and again that treatments are both positively and negatively affected by what we believe. What would be interesting would be if we could teach people to raise levels of dopamine without injecting them with anything. That would truly be self healing, and would result in an incredible sense of empowerment.
I think that so much of disease and poor health arises from a sense of powerlessness: a belief that our bodies are separate from us, like our cars or something. Therefore, there is a sense that they need to be cared for by doctors, the equivalent of the car mechanic. People don't think they can fix themselves; it's too complicated. So, they take the back seat. It's a vicious downward spiral into sickness.
How Did Chimps and Humans Diverge?
I think the most likely theory is the one that we read this week, specifically that the chimps and humans diverged more gradually rather than in one single event. Toumai, discovered in Chad, seems to represent a hybrid human-chimp creature that existed after the date that we believed that pre-human and chimp speciation occurred. Apparently, there was interbreeding creating creatures like Toumai, and modern humans emerged from one of those hybrid species.
So, pre-humans bred with chimps! No wonder evolution scares the ultra right so deeply. But, that's a subject for psychology...
- Week 13: The Science Of Life
Chimps and Tools These chimps seem very smart indeed. Especially the women. I guess I'm not surprised after all we have read this term about the intelligence of animals, and chimps in particular. I'm always fretting about eating meat, and ironically...
- Week Eleven: Forward
Global Crisis in Diet I think my top priority would be for everyone to adopt Michael Pollan's idea: eat food, mostly plants, not too much. When I read that, my whole body smiled. I am beyond frustrated with misinformation on nutrition that is fed...
- Week Six
Living and Non-Living Systems This subject threatens to become very intense and arcane. I can't say I fully understand the autopoetic definition of living systems. I really don't understand the role of cognition in it. That being said, I'll...
- Week Two: Evo Devo Thoughts
I was genuinely surprised to learn about the role of master control genes in the evolutionary process. I always thought (as many people do, I think) that the development of a new trait required a mutation in a gene. And, honestly, I could never figure...
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Week one: Introducing Myself Arriving late to my first trimester of acupuncture school, I find myself more than a little discombobulated. But, in a nutshell, here is where I have been: I grew up and went to school(s) back east. Moved to California and...
Biology
Week Four
A Drug For Everything?
It seems like that is the way that we are headed. Clearly, there's an alarming trend toward medicalizing everything, even personality, and then making nearly every aspect of the human condition "treatable". Looked at from this standpoint, this is appalling. I believe strongly that people need to look deep within themselves and deal with what they find. Taking pills to cure a gambling problem keeps people from doing that. And, of course, it won't work. I hate the ads for drugs. They are creating conditions and then creating cures. It's madness.
But, I do feel that there are situations where the pharmaceutical industry has made important strides in saving human lives. It's not a very popular viewpoint, especially in the non-western health world, but I thank God for things like the polio vaccine having heard about my parents' lives as kids, and seeing pictures of gymanasiums filled with kids in iron lungs. It's easy to say, well we need to be comfortable with letting go. But, I feel very deeply the fundamental human impulse to heal and preserve lives. (I am pro-choice). Each person is truly precious, and if the pharmaceutical industry can come up with cures for things like polio, leukemia, other cancers, I'm all for it.
Raising Levels of Dopamine in Ourselves
Apparently, we can increase levels of dopamine in our brains if we think we are being injected with its precursors. I'm not surprised. It's been shown time and again that treatments are both positively and negatively affected by what we believe. What would be interesting would be if we could teach people to raise levels of dopamine without injecting them with anything. That would truly be self healing, and would result in an incredible sense of empowerment.
I think that so much of disease and poor health arises from a sense of powerlessness: a belief that our bodies are separate from us, like our cars or something. Therefore, there is a sense that they need to be cared for by doctors, the equivalent of the car mechanic. People don't think they can fix themselves; it's too complicated. So, they take the back seat. It's a vicious downward spiral into sickness.
How Did Chimps and Humans Diverge?
I think the most likely theory is the one that we read this week, specifically that the chimps and humans diverged more gradually rather than in one single event. Toumai, discovered in Chad, seems to represent a hybrid human-chimp creature that existed after the date that we believed that pre-human and chimp speciation occurred. Apparently, there was interbreeding creating creatures like Toumai, and modern humans emerged from one of those hybrid species.
So, pre-humans bred with chimps! No wonder evolution scares the ultra right so deeply. But, that's a subject for psychology...
- Week 13: The Science Of Life
Chimps and Tools These chimps seem very smart indeed. Especially the women. I guess I'm not surprised after all we have read this term about the intelligence of animals, and chimps in particular. I'm always fretting about eating meat, and ironically...
- Week Eleven: Forward
Global Crisis in Diet I think my top priority would be for everyone to adopt Michael Pollan's idea: eat food, mostly plants, not too much. When I read that, my whole body smiled. I am beyond frustrated with misinformation on nutrition that is fed...
- Week Six
Living and Non-Living Systems This subject threatens to become very intense and arcane. I can't say I fully understand the autopoetic definition of living systems. I really don't understand the role of cognition in it. That being said, I'll...
- Week Two: Evo Devo Thoughts
I was genuinely surprised to learn about the role of master control genes in the evolutionary process. I always thought (as many people do, I think) that the development of a new trait required a mutation in a gene. And, honestly, I could never figure...
-
Week one: Introducing Myself Arriving late to my first trimester of acupuncture school, I find myself more than a little discombobulated. But, in a nutshell, here is where I have been: I grew up and went to school(s) back east. Moved to California and...