A while back Deepity Chopra tw**ted at me to read a piece he’d written with Dr. Rudolph Tanzi, a neuroscentist at Harvard and Massachusetts General Hospital. (How someone who is a credible scientist got mixed up with Chopra is beyond me). At any rate, I read Chopra and Tanzi’s piece, “You will direct your own biology,” which I criticized here. It’ about how you can change your genes and the course of human evolution simply by thinking about it, meditating, and living the Chopra Life. Here are a few excerpts (my emphasis):

This means that control is being given back to each person; we are no longer seen as puppets of our DNA. The human genome is set to be the stage for future evolution that we ourselves direct, making choice an integral part of genetics. This is in stark contrast to the “biology as destiny” view where genes override choice. Unless decisions, lifestyle, environment, and personal preferences are included, a full picture of the mysteries of our DNA cannot be attained. The speed and extent of change at the genetic level would astonish researchers even a few years ago. Yoga and meditation, for example, can trigger almost immediate responses in genetic activity. Exercise, a balanced diet, good sleep, and stress reduction – all well-known for improving bodily function – exert beneficial effects via our genes. So the next frontier will be to discover how deep and lasting such changes are, how much control we have over them individually, and how they can be passed on to future generations through so-called “soft inheritance,” in which the parents’ life experiences and behavior directly influence the genome of their offspring (transmitted via the epigenome, which controls how the activities of our genes are turned up and down). . . . The mind and emotions directly affect gene activity, and since the mind is the source of a person’s lifestyle and behavior, it directs one’s biological transformations. Self-awareness holds the key to this process of self-transformation. Consciousness is invisibly reaching into the biochemistry of every moment of life. In your body, as in every cell, regulation is holistic, self-generated, self-organizing, and self-directed in concert with consciousness.

This is, of course, pure unadultrated woo; there’s not a shred of evidence that humans can change their genes in a permanent way via changes in our lifestyle, much less through exercise or meditation. This is Lamarckian self-help.

One reason, perhaps, that Tanzi has formed an unholy alliance with Chopra is that Deepakity is a huge cash cow. Here, for example, is the Super Brain Kit, which, I’m horrified to report, is a prize you can get for donating $144 to the Public Broadcasting System (PBS). It uses some of the self-modifying tropes touted in the article above:

As emphasized in our recent book, Super Brain, we believe there is also a better approach to understanding the brain. Your neural networks are being reshaped with every thought, feeling word, and act. This process is intimately tied to genetic activity. Today you will casually perform some very mysterious actions: As an aware being you will imbue your desires with intention (“I’ll have the tuna salad”), direct your attention to specific objects and aspects of the world (“Just look at that sunset!”), and experience the shifting landscape of your inner world (“This movie is boring”) as you navigate the terrain of your mind.

“I’ll have the tuna salad”??? Really? That’s what you pay $144 for?

At any rate, “Yakaru,” an author at the site Spirituality is No Exercise, has followed up on this offer, describing his results in the post “Dr. Rudoph Tanzi’s rainbow bridge to quackery“. Yakaru reports the kerfuffle on my own site, which I never reprised; so let me do so here. The comments appeared on my post cited above:

Or as one commenter put it to Tanzi directly:

“Can you provide any kind of evidence that human thought can voluntarily influence gene expression, that this supposed effect is epigenetic, that it can be stably inherited and that it can be adaptive?”

After Tanzi’s usual blustering and threats of libel action (he’s threatened me repeatedly for simply decrying the weakness of the science), he admitted that no, the evidence isn’t there. As Yakaru notes:

Eventually after much evasion, complaining, insults, obfuscations, threats of libel suits, and hand-waving, he mentioned, among other things, a study on mice. Here, epigenetic changes relating to stress were inherited by offspring for a generation or two, before disappearing. Well and good. But making a grand leap from lab mice to humans — isn’t that rather a lot like the very worst of the “old paradigm”? And just because it works for stress in mice, will it also work for consciously directed thought in humans? Is it heritable by epigenetics? And if so will it be stable enough to eventually affect evolution? Tanzi finally admitted he has no evidence for any of that…. “yet”. In his words (Yakaru’s emphasis):

“So, no, we do not yet have direct molecular evidence of humans changing their DNA epigenetically in response to life experience and perceptions accompanied by biochemical and molecular genetic reactions…..”

Let me Finish Tanzi’s quote (taken from a comment at my site) so I won’t be accused of letting Yakaru’s quote stand out of context (and it’s not out of context):

“. . . We are only proposing this will be an important area of study in the future and would have profound implications on our own trans-generational evolution. With this idea we proposed a “consciousome” project aimed at understanding how our experiences and psychological and physiological reactions to those experiences affect our genomes, as well as those of the next generation. The preliminary data from current epigenetic studies of lower organisms suggests that this is a feasible and worthy of investigation in humans. Our piece was aimed at planting the idea and getting this line of investigation going.”

Yakaru then takes the opportunity to rewrite Chopra and Tanzi’s blurb for “Super Brain”:

Well maybe they could have could have chosen a title that reflected the reality of the situation a little better. Like maybe – Super Brain: hypothetically Unleashing the possibly Explosive but so far purely speculative Power of Your presumed Mind to Maximize or at least minimally affectHealth, Happiness, Spiritual Well-Being if we ever figure out how.

I have problems with people promoting an ill-conceived idea of how we can affect the structure of our genome in an adaptive way by simply changing the way we think; but I have an even bigger problem when those half-baked (indeed, not even quarter-baked) ideas are used in a $144 self-help project. I call that profiting from quackery, and bilking a gullible public.

Now, Deepak, let the tw**ts begin!