INFORMATION MEDICINE

It is 30 years since the publication of The Second Medical Revolution by Laurence Foss and Kenneth Rothenberg, subtitled 'from biomedicine to infomedicine' and which I reviewed on these pages. The follow-up book by Laurence was entitled The End of Modern Medicine, and was awarded the book prize in 2003 and presented at the annual meeting in 2004. Then in the last issue I reviewed Healing with Information by Maria and Istvan Sagi. In this new book, Ervin Laszlo and Pier Mario Biava build on the achievements of the field and the models already developed in the language of vibration, coherence, frequency, resonance, alignment and complexity. Biava has been studying the relationship between cancer and cell differentiation in Milan for more than three decades, so this book represents the fruit of his research set within an emerging philosophical framework. As both Deepak Chopra and Larry Dossey point out, the book is potentially revolutionary in its scientific and clinical applications.

The central idea is David Bohm's idea of in-formation as a universal structuring factor or attractor embedded in what he called the implicate order that in-forms the unfolding events in the explicate order. This leads to a new definition of health and disease whereby 'health is the full (or at any rate adequate) condition of in-formation in the living organism. Disease is the condition of blocked, reduced or otherwise flawed in-formation. Healing, then, is the re-establishment of the condition of full (or adequate) in-formation.' (p. 12) Underlying this view is the organism as a quantum system where interactions form a complex integral network of relationships. The second chapter explains information medicine in clinical practice at the cellular level, where Biava's research on introducing extracts from a Zebrafish embryo into the organism can reprogramme malfunctioning cancer cells. In this context, cancer can be regarded as 'a complex system where contact and communication with the flow of information among organs and systems of organs is interrupted.' The theory is technically elaborated in terms of cell differentiation in various types of stem cells according to the functioning of the epigenetic code. Stem cell differentiation stage factors (SCDSFs) contained in these Zebrafish embryonic cells have been found to act on tumours by slowing or stopping their growth and restoring the correct programming. Apparently, Zebrafish 'have very largely the same proteins as humans, and access to their genetic material is simple and safe.'

Experiments have been carried out both in vitro and in clinical trials, with considerable success. In one such experiment, in inhibition percentages ranged from 73% of the malignant brain tumour to 26% of the melanoma, bringing about 'cessation of the cell cycle in accordance with the type of tumour, genetic damage repair, and cell re-differentiation - or the apoptosis (death) of the tumour cells if repair is no longer possible.' (p. 33) Conclusions based on the experiments define cancer cells as altered stem cells 'in which mutations of DNA or epigenetic alterations are present.' In one experiment from the Children's Hospital of Chicago, malignant melanoma reverted to a normal phenotype when it was in the environment of a Zebrafish embryo. Translated into the language of in-formation, these Zebrafish stem cells act as an attractor reorienting the living system towards health and normalcy. The same mechanisms are active during the phases of organogenesis, as observed in a declaration of a committee of oncologists on the research finding it scientifically sound (with 54 references). In summing up implications, the authors propose that the universe is not a material system, but rather a cosmic information network or more precisely 'a macroscopic quantum system of in-formed vibration' reflected in individual organisms.

The next section consists of seven assessments, mainly by scientists and doctors. Larry Dossey compares the outstanding results of this treatment with standard figures for treatment of primary liver cancer, which highlights its significance, also remarking that this mode of treatment is 'upstream' when compared with the downstream approach of conventional therapies. The second part presents two editorials, four principal reports and a further 10 abstracts of selected peer-reviewed studies with full references. This will enable scientists and clinicians to get to grips with the research and its far-reaching implications for cancer and other chronic degenerative diseases. Sample titles include a systemic approach to cancer treatment: tumour cell reprogramming focused on endocrine-related cancers; cancer, cell death and differentiation: the role of epigenetic code in tumour growth control; and treatment with stem cell differentiation stage factors of intermediate – advanced hepatocellular carcinoma. The strength of this novel intervention is the way in which it maps onto existing biochemical understanding, even while presenting the data within a new philosophical framework going beyond the 'anti-' military imagery of battles to the idea of restoring the original programming of the cells in ways that can already be understood through other lines of stem cell research. One can only hope that this potentially revolutionary therapeutic work will not be closed down by the cancer establishment.