A software that will tell you what kind of ailment you will have, based on your DNA! Is it scientific?
“Every man’s life lies within the present; for the past is spent and done with, and the future is uncertain.” — Marcus Aurelius
A few days ago, The Hindu reported on a medical horoscope available in a new software that is expected to be installed soon in all major hospitals. One has only to answer some questions and the software will predict your medical future accurately. This is not new. “Doctors have been predicting the unpredictable future of their patients all the time” felt WJ Firth, professor of physics at Strathclyde University in Glasgow, in the British Medical Journal in 1991.
Following similar advice, Angelina Jolie had her beautiful breasts removed, a couple of months ago, to avoid any future chance of her getting breast cancer based on her genetic data. Ultimately, science claims to have triumphed over nature in unravelling the secrets of the future against the natural law.
Why does nature intend to keep your future a secret? That is the only way a human being can be happy on this planet. Ignorance is bliss here. Imagine, for a minute, that the software declares that you will get cancer in the near future. Your life, from that time onwards, will be totally different and, for all you know, you might die of sheer fear of cancer.
When it comes to our poor village astrologer predicting people’s future, based on their horoscope, the rationalist ‘scientific’ community demonises him, in no uncertain terms. But we prefer a predictive software because it represents technological sophistication. The software is supposed to predict the future based on your genetic make-up, like the one Angelina Jolie experienced.
Curiously, not all the DNA in your chromosomes come from your evolutionary ancestors. Your DNA includes the genes from at least eight retroviruses and many other germ genes. At some point in human history, these genes were incorporated into human DNA. These perform important functions; yet, they are entirely alien to our genetic ancestry. There are more than 10 times the germ genes in your metagenome so that there is more bacterial life inside you than ‘human life’!
The software astrology is based on our genetic make-up as we are taught to believe that genes determine what each of us is like, physically; but genes are only a tiny part of our DNA! A large portion (97%) of our genes was thought to be junk, until now. We now realise that the process that goes on outside the genes—epigenetics—has a major role to play in our evolution and development. Otherwise, how can just 23,000 genes represent all that happens to us? The so-called junk (epigenetics) is as important as, if not more than, the known human genes.
The picture of the world we ‘see’ is also artificial. Our brains don’t produce an image the way a video camera works. Instead, the brain constructs a model of the world from the information provided by modules that measure light and shade, edges, curvature and so on. This also compensates for the rapid jerky movement of our eyes, the saccades. We have more than just five senses.
With all these new data accumulating from the new wisdom of quantum mechanics, the old idea of predicting the future from our genetic make-up, as they did in the case of Angelina Jolie, looks childish, to say the least. What worries me is that the new software astrology might do far more damage than poor village astrologers that rationalists cry hoarse about. I might now repeat my usual warning to the apparently healthy in society. Do not go to the hospital when you are healthy. You might get a wrong prediction of your future, thanks to the new software toy. Do see your doctor for any deviation in your health without fail and be an intelligent partner in your treatment process.
“In times of change, learners inherit the Earth, while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists.”— Eric Hoffer
Professor Dr BM Hegde, a Padma Bhushan awardee in 2010, is an MD, PhD, FRCP (London, Edinburgh, Glasgow & Dublin), FACC and FAMS.
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Sun,Moon & Earth's relative positioning brings about tidal energies in oceans which cover 71% of earth's area.
Humans also 70% fluid content in body hence scientifically prone to waves in emotions/creations etc.
Astrology is Science of Karmic influences on human soul which is energy which cannot be created nor destroyed but transformed.
Medical Astrology is small portion of the same.
Mahesh [email protected]
There are some amongst us here who hide an argument of nothing with the use of the word "scientific".
How could our Rishis/Munis of days of yore find out that Mars has similarities with that of earth? Is it not amazing ?
I suppose such purveyors of superstition will have enthusiastic followers but I hardly expected to find articles of this poor quality in moneylife.
Kumaaram shakti-hastam tam makngalam pran’amaamyaham"
I bow down to Mars – who was born from the earth; who is as bright as lightening; who is a divine youth with great power in his hands.
As far as holding medical science in esteem or demonising astrology is concerned , both are wrong. For Medical science has gone no more than giving marginal relief and certainly offers no cure from most diseases or disorders , least of them being simple infections. Whereas astrology handles predictive part better in the interest of caution alone. Dr Hegde makes an interesting comparison that Preventive Health is only as effective a caution as astrology is. Don't follow either and live happily till such time it becomes unavoidable to see a Doctor.
What Dr Hegde has not mentioned is that people in the west find traditional medicine to be doing a lot more than allopathic medicine which emphasises on surgery as a solution to many ills. Yoga and ayurveda is a high end service today. Both certainly helps you enjoy life. That alone is the message.
Consult an astrologer to match horoscopes and fix dates for weddings, etc but if you trust them wih your life by asking them for medical decisions,well it is your life.
This article is completely unscientific,
Moneylife is not doing its readers any kind of service by printing such articles. If such articles take their place alongside others that purport to offer financial literacy, I can only infer that the stock tips and market trends in other articles are also produced by consulting a jyotishi, checking for good omens at the time an IPO comes out etc.
Many years ago one day-trader went to an astrologer and asked whether it was good for him to do share trading. The old astrologer replied “Very good". Then he asked him whether he should go for "short or long". The old man who didn’t even heard of stock exchanges or share trading told him "you do whatever you want". Next day he went short and a few days later we learnt that the day-trader disappeared without a trace!!
Rediff Money has this page for example .. http://money.rediff.com/tools/astrology/...
1. Her mother died of ovarian cancer aged 56, having developed it in her 40s.
2. Her mother's sister has stage 4 breast cancer
3. Her maternal grandmother died of cancer at 45
4. Her great grandmother died of ovarian cancer at 53
There is a long history of breast and ovarian cancer in her monthers' side of the family.
http://www.eonline.com/news/420478/angel...
However there is a strange theory called ayurgenomics that tries to map genetics to the Ayurvedic classifications like vata, pitta and kapha, first started during the previous bjp govt and it has continued through upa governments, and is in the bjp manifesto
Not very many examples of peer reviewed work from that study , I must say. And if it produces misunderstandings like the one this dr. Hegde seems to suffer from, I guess it is not the success its backers seek to believe it will be.