Mindful Evolution: Can You Guide What Your Genes Are Doing?

By Deepak Chopra, MD and Rudolph E. Tanzi, PhD

 

Past and FutureHuman beings are unique in the scenario of life on Earth–that much is obvious. We are guided by awareness, and to implement our wishes, dreams, and inventions, the higher brain (chiefly the cerebral cortex) has evolved to extraordinary proportions. Although classical Darwinism is mindless, and staunchly defended as such by strict materialists, Homo sapiens is no longer caught in the clutches of natural selection. As we saw in the first post of this series, human society is very different from the state of nature. Chimpanzees don’t get their food at the grocery store, and we don’t get ours by fighting with rivals in the treetops.

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TIME 100 PIONEERS – RUDY TANZI

Congrats to Rudy Tanzi who was recognized by TIME 100 Pioneers.  Rudy is Co Chairman of the foundation’s SBTI research study and 2012 Recipient of the Rustum Roy Spirit Award acknowledged at Sages and Scientists Symposium 2012.

Alzheimer’s pioneer

I’m a child of Alzheimer’s, and I know firsthand how scary it is to watch the mind of someone you love get slowly erased. I also know that despite the fact that we’re in the middle of an epidemic, we simply don’t yet have the drive—or the drugs—to put an end to Alzheimer’s. But that doesn’t mean there’s no hope. Tanzi stands out as one of the few scientists who has committed his career to finding a cure for Alzheimer’s, and last year he brought us one step closer. In a truly remarkable feat, Tanzi created what’s been nicknamed “Alzheimer’s in a dish”—human brain cells that, in a petri dish, develop the markers of this terrible disease. This makes it possible for scientists to better study which of the countless drugs out there might actually slow or wipe out this mind-blowing disease.

Shriver is an author, the executive producer ofStill Alice and The Alzheimer’s Project and the founder of the Wipe Out Alzheimer’s Challenge

Illustration by Joel Kimmel for TIME

Originally posted on TIME – http://time.com/3823236/rudolph-tanzi-2015-time-100/?xid=emailshare

 

Why Does Richard Dawkins Keep Doing Me Favors?

Photo Mar 31, 12 49 38 PMBy Deepak Chopra, MD

In a recent article on his website, Richard Dawkins spontaneously erupted, even though he and I haven’t had contact for many months. We debated once in Mexico City, and he erupted there, too. The ideas I put forth, such as the possibility that we live in a conscious universe, bring out the Scrooge in him.

Now he’s posted a real bah humbug: “Why Does Deepak Chopra Hate Me?” written by Steven Newton (Link: https://richarddawkins.net/2015/04/why-does-deepak-chopra-hate-me/)  It’s mostly an ad hominem fulmination without basis in fact. Dawkins pastes the tag “anti-evolutionist” on me even though he was part of an e-mail discussion for a while that included top geneticists and other scientists along with me, in which we discussed where evolutionary theory might be heading in the future.

Dawkins bowed out with a surly growl. He doesn’t keep up with the new genetics, and so one can understand why it infuriates him that someone like me, lacking his academic credentials, knows something about the subject–enough to be writing a new book, Super Genes, with Dr. Rudy E. Tanzi, one of the world’s leading researchers on Alzheimer’s. Dawkins, despite his scientific background and air of complete authority, has written zero books with any prominent researcher, geneticist, or anyone else who might bring him up to date on his own field.

I can only shrug at his latest polemic, which is filled with stray arrows shot in the dark. Actually, he’s done me a favor. By airing the ideas he finds preposterous, such as flaws in Darwinian theory, the conscious universe, and the ontological problem of whether the moon exists without an observer (he seems unaware that this “crackpot” idea was discussed between Albert Einstein and Niels Bohr on a famous occasion), Dawkins is pointing his readers to some of the most exciting theory that is sure to impact the future of science.

Sadly, mocking these ideas is the closest he will ever come to grasping them.

 

Deepak Chopra, MD is the author of more than 80 books with twenty-two New York Times bestsellers. He serves as the founder of The Chopra Foundation and co-founder of The Chopra Center for Wellbeing. His latest book is The 13th Disciple: A Spiritual Adventure.

 

Remember Me – Support Cure Alzheimer's Fund Research

“The Voice” and the Neuroscientist Team Up to Fight Alzheimer’s.  After meeting in a television studio this unlikely pair has teamed up with Cure Alzheimer’s Fund for a worthy cause: Campaign Remember Me.  Proceeds from sales of the song and direct donations will support innovative research into the causes of the disease and the development of effective therapies to stop it. Because Cure Alzheimer’s Fund’s Board of Directors funds all the organization’s expense, every penny of every contribution goes directly to research.

 

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