The Book of Genesis has an interesting take on genetics and the environment.

Emergent processes, such as self-organization, literally create order out of disorder. They are responsible for most of the patterns, structures and orderly arrangements that we find in the natural world, and many of those in the realms of mind, society and culture. Patterns form from a state of non-equilibrium, according to the laws of thermodynamics.

Cholera, a disease that is assuming serious proportions in hurricane-ravaged Haiti. Cholera strikes so fast it is sometimes called the lightening disease. Without rehydration therapy, or antibiotics for severe cases, cholera can kill in a matter of hours. The disease causes acute diarrhea that can lead to severe dehydration. Blood group O individuals have a greater risk of infection with cholera and develop the most severe and life threatening forms of this illness.

Joseph E. Pizzorno, ND of was kind enough to send along a review of my textbook Fundamentals of Generative Medicine that will appear in the upcoming issue of Integrative Medicine, A Clinician’s Journal.

Harvard University has developed an animation that would take their cellular biology students on a journey through the microscopic world of a cell. Amazing.

Again and again I come up against the greatness of one single man. William Clouser Boyd (1903-1983) appears to be one of those fascinating people who go on to dominate an entire area of research for a generation. It seems as if his creativity knew no bounds. In the 1940’s Boyd noticed that the protein agglutinin in lima bean would agglutinate red cells of human blood group A but not those of O or B; he had in fact discovered that many of these blood agglutinins were actually specific to one blood group or another. With Elizabeth Shapely he coined their modern-day name, lectins, which is Latin for “to pick or choose.”

How and why would natural selection further a trait that is good for the survival of a group or society, but injurious to the individual? Can genes be selfish? Are we are the “survival machines” of our genes?