Sarah Knox

Background: Western medicine assumes that when symptoms of physical or mental illness occur, the cause is local and matter based; e.g., invading viruses or bacteria, malfunctioning genes, neurohormones, etc. For that reason, it approaches clinical intervention with standardized protocols that address whatever matter-based entity is perceived to be its source, assuming it to be the same across all patients. What physics tells us about the nature of reality is vastly different, namely that at a quantum level, particles are merely fluctuations in fields which appear and disappear randomly and are interconnected in networks throughout the universe. Humans are a subset of this network like waves that are parts of an ocean. These fields do not stop at skin or object boundaries but connect through them. Furthermore, energy carries information that has thermodynamic properties and conveys meaning. The concept of meaning, so important to human cognition, behavior, motivation and emotion, has been completely eliminated from scientific studies on human consciousness and ontology because it is a ‘value’ not an object that can be “objectively” measured. Method: Evidence-based medicine is only as good as the data (evidence) on which its conclusions are based. If the data are inaccurate or incomplete, clinical decision making will be flawed. Unfortunately, the current paradigm is biased and has mislead biomedical research in the following ways: 1) Current study designs utilized to diagnose and treat cancer and mental illness do not acknowledge the major causal role of biophysics and quantum entanglement in systems biological control mechanisms. These designs bias hypotheses so that the questions asked focus primarily on matter (e.g., chemistry), excluding biophysics. What is not in the equation cannot be in the result. Results often reveal significant correlations but false assumptions about causality. 2) Their hypotheses assume that mendelian inheritance is the primary genetic mechanism in human carcinomas, when data clearly indicate that epigenetics (gene / environment interactions) play a much more consequential role in tumor initiation and progression. 3) Cancer research is based on inaccurate animal models. These chimeras in no way reflect either the onset or progression of malignancy because they isolate targeted pathways, eliminating systemic influences that occur at every stage of tumor development. 4) Biomedical science summarily rejects implications from repeated quantitative and qualitative (e.g., reincarnation, after death communication) studies with highly significant results that overwhelmingly point to the existence of consciousness as a fundamental basis of reality rather than something that originates in the brain. Conclusion: The current biomedical paradigm does not pass the test of scientific credibility. It is driven by a belief system that is tantamount to religion, because it is without supporting data, but threatens excommunication to any scientist not pledging allegiance to its catechism. To become coherent with modern physics, what is needed is a bifurcation away from materialist reductionism to investigate and integrate energy-based healing modalities, top-down causation, systems biology and the role of quantum field theory as the fundamental substrate of an all-pervasive living, creative consciousness.

Sarah S. Knox, Professor Emerita, West Virginia University, Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, received her PhD from Stockholm University and began her career as a Principal Investigator at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden before moving to the NIH in the U.S. where she served in multiple roles. The most recent of these was as Associate Scientific Director of the National Children’s Study designed to follow developmental trajectories of 100,000 children from pregnancy to 21 years-of-age. This study was a line item in the federal budget but was cancelled after several years due to a change in governmental priorities. Dr. Knox has written and lectured extensively in the field of biomedicine (cardiovascular disease, cancer, child development), has an h-index of 37, >4,500 scientific citations of her work; and a research interest score of  >2,400. She has also chaired multiple international meetings and symposia, including one for NATO. (see ResearchGate https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Sarah-Knox ). She taught for many years in the graduate programs at the WVU School of Medicine and the WVU School of Public Health (courses: Epigenetics and Systems Biology, Cancer Cell Biology, Gene x Environment Interactions, and multiple courses in research methods and statistics). She is also currently affiliated with the Scientific and Medical Network of the Galileo Commission. Her conclusion after decades of research is that the core assumptions of the current biomedical paradigm are inaccurate due to their inconsistency with current data from physics (the basic tenets of quantum field theory) and systems biology. Furthermore, she adheres to the growing body of evidence that consciousness is primary, not a secondary product of the brain.