July 2014 John Weeks Integrator Round-Up: Miscellaneous

John Weeksby John Weeks, Publisher/Editor of The Integrator Blog News & Reports

  

Larry Dossey, MD's latest book - the exceptional One Mind

Larry Dossey, MD has published a new work that some consider his finest and most accessible: One Mind. In it, Dossey uses anecdotes to walk readersrepeatedly into the great and unexplained mysteries of mind and consciousness. One by one, he asks us to consider their meaning. How does a dog finds its way home from Iowa to Oregon after being lost by a vacationing family? What makes identical twins, separated a birth, each become engineers, wear pens in their pockets and marry women named Nancy? How can an individual know, in an exact moment, that thousands of miles away a loved one has been involved in a horrible accident, or died? How does a person, post trauma, gain fluency in a language never studied? What explains the similarity of near deathfear death and shared death experiences?

by John Weeks, Publisher/Editor of The Integrator Blog News & Reports

Larry Dossey, MD's latest book - the exceptional One Mind

Larry Dossey, MD has published a new work that some consider his finest and most accessible: One Mind. In it, Dossey uses anecdotes to walk readersrepeatedly into the great and unexplained mysteries of mind and consciousness. One by one, he asks us to consider their meaning. How does a dog finds its way home from Iowa to Oregon after being lost by a vacationing family? What makes identical twins, separated a birth, each become engineers, wear pens in their pockets and marry women named Nancy? How can an individual know, in an exact moment, that thousands of miles away a loved one has been involved in a horrible accident, or died? How does a person, post trauma, gain fluency in a language never studied? What explains the similarity of near death, fear death and shared death experiences?

Throughout, Dossey , whose first best-seller was Space, Time and Medicine, weaves the perspectives of philosophers, physicists and scientists whose life work takes them continuously to the edges of all we take for granted (or granite) and who find the dismissive answers wanting. Dossey's reservation position is that there is no firmer evidence for the reductive brain-produces-consciousness postulate than there is for his one mind hypothesis. Here is the exceptional medical writer Lewis Thomas, MD, former research director at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, as quoted by Dossey: "There is still that permanent vanishing of consciousness to be accounted for. Are we to be stuck forever with the problem? Where does it go? Is it simple stopped dead in its track, lost in humus, wasted? Considering the tendency of nature to find uses for complex and intricate mechanisms, this seems to me unnatural. I prefer to think of it somehow s separated off at the filaments of its attachment, and then drawn like an easy breath back into the membrane of its origin, a fresh memory for a biospherical nervous system ..."

Comment: This kind of reading is not my usual fare. Perhaps it caught me at a perfect moment, when my own spirit was pulled in multiple directions. Perhaps it is simply dumbed-down just right for me. Dossey believe his one mind theory explains these occurrences. I am happily journeying, with my residential agnostic on my shoulder, into his "one great mystery." I am reading in it, short section by section, as others read daily meditations. I thoroughly recommend this mind-and-outlook expanding book.

Dr. Oz on the Congressional hot-seat on weight-loss claims

The American Botanical Council sent an e-news entitled "Senate Weight Loss Hearing Grills Dr. Oz." The piece consisted largely of a thorough June 17, 2014 report from the Utah Natural Products Alliance (UNPA) on the evening of a U.S. Senate Commerce Subcommittee on Consumer Affairs hearing on weight loss products. The hearing focused on the testimony by, and questions to, integrative medicine television personality Mehmet Oz, MD. Chair Clare McCaskill (D-MO) showed a clip from the Dr. Oz show in which Oz promoted pure green coffee as "a miracle pill that can burn fat fast." McCaskill questioned Oz's promotion of such quick fixes: "If it seems too good to be true, it is." He added: "Dr. Oz, we will have tough questions about your role, the ‘Oz Effect.'"

According to the ABC/UNPA report, Oz largely defended his views, conceding only that he is attempting to be more discriminating on the products he now features on the show. He recommended three directions: a quick reference list so consumers could see what products celebrities were endorsing specifically; instituting a system of whistleblowers for scam company employees; and having a new private-sector-funded bounty system to encourage revelation of scams. Related media included: NPR's Dr. Oz Scolded at Hearing on Weight Loss Scams; Associated Press' Doctor on TV Says He'll Back Off on Weight Claims; and an ABC provided this link for the archived video of the hearing.

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