Decoding the Human Body-Field: The new science of information as medicine, by Peter H. Fraser and Harry Massey, with Joan Parisi Wilcox, Healing Arts Press, Rochester, Vermont, 2008, 416 ff
Nutri-energetic systems of information processing, where QED meets chi
By Howard Jones
The authors have created a way of looking at the human body, not just as an assemblage of flesh and bone but as an energy field created by the atoms and molecules of which it is composed: thus `thoughts, beliefs, hopes and desires can change the chemistry of our bodies.'
They accept that, as a result, `practical questions take on seemingly metaphysical overtones.' Together they have founded Nutri-Energetic Systems (NES) of health-care based on a combination of theory derived from quantum electrodynamics (QED) with the practice of eastern medicine. The two principal authors used NES to cure themselves and others of debilitating diseases - Fraser is an Australian alternative medical practitioner; Massey is British and was one of his patients who helped him to formulate NES. Joan Wilcox is Peter Fraser's research assistant.
The authors seem somewhat confused about the nature of the energies they are dealing with. They say in Chapter 2 with reference to chi, prana, meridians or chakras that `NES is not working with these kinds of energies' which they describe as `cosmic, metaphysical energies': NES deals with the energies of matter they say. But in Chapter 5 detailing Fraser's illness and its treatment they say specifically that NES calls `this pervasive, universal energy the Source energy and . . . that it is not some unknown cosmic energy but a real energy of physics, what is called zero-point energy'. In scientific terms, psychic energy or energy involved in healing processes is in fact most likely to be zero-point energy. Zero-point energy is the residual (potential) energy of subatomic particles of matter when atoms are at the zero point of temperature (zero Kelvin).
In the 1940s and 1950s, Nobel Prizewinner Albert Szent-Györgyi was one of the first to recognize the importance of electromagnetic fields in the body, though the idea was strongly criticized at the time. Many prominent researchers have been following up his ideas ever since. This book illustrates how information - how the mind processes the sense data it receives - may be the most important influence on our health: it shows up in the placebo (and nocebo!) effects.
Chapters 1-3 describe quite clearly some of the basic physics and biology. Chapters 4 to 8 are largely about the authors' illnesses and how these led to the founding of the NES concept. The remainder of the book, Chapters 9 to 14, deal with the NES model of the human body-field and patients treated. The theory sections are useful, the personal stories interesting, but I am not sure how much use the applications of the NES model will be to people who have no access to a practitioner. At the end of the book there is a Glossary of some of the more technical terms, many pages of Notes and a useful Index. Despite there being some confusion about the nature of the energies involved, this is an interesting book that is complementary to many others now available on mind and health.
Dr Howard A. Jones is the author of The Thoughtful Guide to God (2006) and The Tao of Holism (2008), both published by O Books of Winchester, UK.
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