What's been really difficult for me as a scientist is to see how difficult it's been for us as a community to acknowledge that we are not molecular machines.
And there was so much hope.
That we would find.
You know,
The molecular basis of every disease in the catalog.
And,
You know,
The Human Genome Project set out to do this in the mid-1990s.
And in 2001,
The whole human genome was sequenced.
The Human Genome Project,
As an endeavor,
Was completed and then it was published.
And then there was so much hope.
And the hypothesis there,
Which started many years ago,
Was that there are some genes that were the cause of cancer,
Some genes that were the cause of Alzheimer's,
And some genes were the cause of cardiovascular disease.
And so the hypothesis was that the common human diseases that plague most of modern society was actually written in the genes.
And if we could read the whole genome,
We would find the cause for those diseases.
If the Human Genome Project was a randomized control trial and RCT.
It would have failed its primary endpoint.
The primary endpoint was we were going to find a gene for this disease and all these diseases.
The result is there's no gene that tells you what someone will get sick of and when they're going to get sick.
There's just nothing in the genome that tells you this.
And the effect sizes that were discovered after billions of dollars were spent on human genome-wise association studies is mostly very small effect size.
There are some genes that we inherit various variants of that increase your risk a little bit for this or for that.
And there are some rare cases where some genes really predispose you for these.
These are extremely rare,
Less than 1%.
The common human diseases are not written in your genes.
How long you live is not written in your genes.
And this has become quite clear in the last 10,
15 years.
And as a scientific community,
I think we have failed to acknowledge this.
And there's so much inertia in the system,
In part because,
You know,
Logically,
And we've all grown up in this like the fish in the water,
We've all grown up in this framework,
Right?
It used to be a hypothesis and then it became a theory and then it became a dogma.
The theory was disproven.
You know,
The hypothesis of the Human Genome Project was falsified pretty well.
And we failed to reject the hypothesis and turn over to a new one.
And I think that's what we've we've missed.
And that clinging,
That dogmatic thinking around,
You know,
We are molecular machines and therefore the solution to health and the solution to disease and illnesses is to make drugs,
Right,
That will target molecules.
This whole line of thinking is not the way forward.
So our failure as a community to acknowledge this,
I think,
Has driven suffering.
And I think this is why there are so many people who have lost trust in science.
And there are tens of millions of people in this country and other countries who do not respect science and who have lost trust in medicine.
And I suspect a big part of this is because people feel they trust their experience,
Which is what we the first thing we have access to,
Right?
That we know to be true is how you feel.
So if you feel like something is not right with you and you don't feel well,
You go see your doctor.
The doctor looks at your molecules and then says,
No,
You're fine.
But then deep down,
You know,
You're not fine.
There's a conflict here,
Right?
Do you trust your own experience or do you trust the white coat wearing person?
And so there's a real dichotomy that really causes inner conflict.
And then that inner conflict drives,
I think,
Loss of trust.
And so I think that the way we've done science for the past 20 years has been skewed by a dogma,
A falsified hypothesis that's crystallized and become really hard to let go of because we're so attached to this physical reality of our bodies and of the world.
Physics went through this maybe like a few decades ago when quantum physics came around and said,
You know,
This stuff,
Like we think everything is solid and like there's a nucleus and atoms,
Like,
No,
Not right.
The real stuff is actually probabilities and there's this quantum indeterminacy and there's principle and all of these discoveries in physics clashed with the old paradigm were resolved by better theories,
Quantum theory.
And now the physicists that are deep in this,
They know that the most fundamental layer of existence is not the physical stuff.
Right.
And some people call it the mind,
Some people call it consciousness,
Some people call it like energy.
And there are different words for that.
But matter and physical things that we can see and feel is not the most fundamental layer of reality.
So I think.
.
.
Biomedical science is just.
Clashing against that reality and worth.
We as a community are struggling to let go of that old paradigm that is not serving us anymore.
And it's actually bringing inertia and then leading to over-medication of our population and preventing,
I think,
The empowering stance that we need to promote in culture and in society.
