“The Genie in Your Genes” by Dawson Church: Book Review

The first thought that came to mind after reading “The Genie in Your Genes,” was the word “Inspiring.” It seems like so much that I read today says that our genes determine everything. If this were true, it can be seen as a guarantee for cancer for people who have cancer in their families. It is refreshing to learn that in spite of my genes, I can still play a role in determining the outcome of my health.

“The Genie in Your Genes,” discusses a variety of ways in which we can use our special link between mind and body to maintain our health. It reminds us of the importance of maintaining our emotional health so that we can stay physically healthy. If stress and negative thoughts can have an effect on our health, then it makes sense that positive, “…tools of our consciousness-including our beliefs, prayers, thoughts, intentions, and faith – often correlate much more strongly with our health, longevity, and happiness then our genes do.”

I really like this idea, because it puts me in the driver’s seat of determining my health. By using the techniques recommended from energy medicine and Energy Psychology, certain chronic health conditions, autoimmune conditions, and psychological traumas can be reversed. It is important to note that the author was very clear about certain health crises needing immediate medical attention. He does not recommend that you try to positively think your way out of appendicitis!

Having a healthy lifestyle by doing things like exercising, eating fresh fruits and vegetables, abstaining from smoking and excess alcohol are also factors that can prolong our lives. Church discusses, to great length, the idea of healing coming from outside the control of the gene. This is referred to as epigenetics. He says that, “…invisible factors of consciousness and intention – such as our beliefs, feelings, prayers, and attitudes – play an important role in the epigenetic control of genes.”

“The Genie in Your Genes,” is not a fast read. It is a book that covers a complex subject, yet it is written in a way that makes the topic clear to understand. It is well researched, well referenced and at the end is an appendix that gives you further information on how to find a practitioner and some exercises that you can do on your own. Church does not leave you hanging with the feeling that while this is a great topic, you will have no idea how to proceed. He tells you.

I think that this book should be read by practitioners of medicine, alternative therapists, science students and people who have psychological stress or chronic health problems believed to be caused by genetic defaults. “The Genie in Your Genes” will open your eyes and give you hope that you can control your life.

Biotechnology and Colours

Biotechnology and the world of colours have always been intertwined. Nature’s hues and tints are captured in their natural or synthetic state in a variety of market products. The flower markets of natural blood-red roses and gene-designed blue roses recently released in Japan are apt examples.

To-date notwithstanding the awe-inspiring snip and tuck techniques of genetic engineering, the legendary ‘Black Tulip’ of French author Alexander Dumas still remains the ‘Holy Grail of the Tulip world’. Several types from ‘Tulip Queen of Night’ (1944) to T.’Black Hero’ (1984) constitute ‘the category of the ‘blackest of the officially ‘purple’ tulips’.

Nature’s wealth of colours have inspired celebrity painters and poets —French-born Hillarie Belloc describes in verse the morphology of The Microbe with its ‘seven tufted tails with lots of pink and purple spots.’; and schoolchildren to explore the microbial world through the ‘looking-glass’ of Winogradsky’s column with its purple and green bands —consortia of the green and purple photosynthetic bacteria. Blue-green cyanobacteria contribute to the economy of Nature’s important biogeochemical Cycles-the nitrogen cycle.

The Red Sea may derive its colour and name from the red-cyanobacterium — Trichodesmium erythraeum, but the destruction of numerous fish is due to the Red Tide population of the plant-like red-brown dinoflagellates. Pigments help classify the brown, yellow, red and green algae; and protozoa and yeasts such as Euglena and Pichia. Nature’s colour artistry occurs throughout the biospectrum incorporating interalia green and purple bacteria, antibiotic-producing species of Streptomyces and Nocardia, fungi that color cheeses, blue-green anoles, rainbow papaya and trout, and green fluorescent proteins responsible for the coloration of diverse corals and anemones. Green, yellow, orange-red and purple-blue chromoproteins are the raison d’etre of fabled reef colours varying in the spectrum of daylight conditions.

Verily, Nature’s palette of pigments and paints underscores the need of bioresources centres to capture, classify and conserve the planet’s biotreasury lest extinction result from benign neglect and commercial exploitation.

Review of on Natural Selection by Charles Darwin

I have been researching great thinkers and how they have shaped the world. I have also been trying to prove that the act of reading helps to generate or even stimulate great ideas. Great thinkers do not operate within a vacuum, they rely on the works of others, and often expand the original thought and take the world further. Charles Darwin and British biologist Alfred Russel Wallace independently arrived at similar theories of Natural Selection in the mid-1800s after reading Essay on the Principle of Population by British pastor Thomas Malthus.

Darwin defines natural selection as the “preservation of favourable variations and the rejection of injurious variation.” So what does this all mean? Darwin further adds, “Variations neither useful nor injurious would not be affected by natural selection, and would be left a fluctuating element, as perhaps we see in the species called polymorphic… Natural selection can act only by taking advantage of slight variations; she can never take a leap, but must advance by the shortest steps.”

This book wasn’t the easiest to read, and I found it quite “dry”. But, in my quest to find out where really good ideas come from, I made the sacrifice and slogged through it. I have selected fives ideas from On Natural Selection. For the five ideas below, how can you use them in different contexts to resolve/understand modern day problems?

Five Good Ideas
When a plant or animal is placed in a new country amongst new competitors, though the climate may be exactly the same as its former home, yet the conditions of its life will generally be changed in an essential manner. If we wished to increase its average numbers in its new home, we should have to modify it in a different way to what we should have done in its native country; for we should have to give it some advantage over a different set of competitors or enemies.
Individuals having any advantage, however slight, over others, would have the best chance of surviving and of procreating their kind
When a species, owing to highly favourable circumstances, increases inordinately in numbers in a small tract, epidemics often ensue
The more diversified the descendants from any one species become in structure, constitution, and habits, by so much will they be better enabled to seize on many and widely diversified places in the polity of nature, and so be enabled to increase in numbers
Natural selection is working behind the scenes all the time throughout the world whenever the opportunity arises. It works to improve each organic being in relation to its organic and inorganic conditions of life. You cannot see these slow changes taking place, until after a long period of time has elapsed, we see that the forms of life are now different from what they formerly were

We could take idea number two and look at it in the context of education. It’s a reasonable assumption to make that people who are more educated have a better chance of succeeding than those who have less education. Or, for that same idea, we could say, someone who has an idea and knows how to take action, will be more successful than someone who has ideas but do nothing about them. Success in this context is not restricted to financial success. Why don’t you take one of the above five ideas and see what new ideas you can generate?

I recommend On Natural Selection because I am sure that you will come up with your own five ideas. This is not a book that you would read for entertainment, but it will certainly stretch you.