Holistic medicine as scientific world view
Prof. Dr. Dipl.-Ing. Steffen Schulz, Berlin, Germany
In line with tradition, this Congress begins with a keynote address. Such an address can help encourage us to contemplate the wider scientific issues that concern us all at this conference before we then move on to present and discuss specific results of bioresonance therapy in various important lectures over the next few days.
One such wider issue is the physical medium which enables therapy to take effect: electromagnetic interaction. It is one of the three fundamental physical forces of Nature. The so-called strong interaction binds atomic nuclei together while the gravitational interaction or gravitational attraction does the same for the whole universe. In between, the electromagnetic interaction underlies the molecular processes of chemistry and also enables all life on our planet. It does this primarily with the light of the sun, the source of all life on earth.
I should now like to demonstrate why this same medium assumes an absolutely key role in the life of each and every individual and that it is the light of our lives in the original sense of the word.
For this you only have to think of the medical consequences that flat lines in EEG and ECG can have in a very short time. So I will use the term “light” for the electromagnetic interaction in this sense, that of the vital significance of this primeval physical force, rather than just in the narrow spectrum covered by our eyesight.
Over 100 years ago light forced a revolution in man’s physical view of the world whichis still going on today. Physics, with its great achievements, has decisively shaped the scientific view of the world. The objectivity of the discoveries made by physics is of critical significance. A high price was paid however from a medical perspective: anything subjectively human had to be discounted categorically. From this arose the danger of seeking to create a supposedly objective view of man and of underestimating the individuality of each person.
This is currently demonstrated in particularly dramatic form with diagnosis-related groups (DRGs) in the cost-conscious hospital environment. Here a patient in need of help increasingly runs the risk of being degraded to the level of an arbitrarily interchangeable element within a statistically defined diagnosis group.
Consequently, in seeking out holistic care, all patients hope that they will be treated first and foremost as a unique human being. At issue therefore is the basic requirement of any healing treatment: prioritising a respect for the dignity of each individual seeking help ahead of any specific medical, commercial or scientific activity.
An example of this is a documentary entitled “The Placebo Effect” broadcast a few months ago on the arte TV channel. This aimed to explain how something “ineffective” could incontestably produce an effect. Elaborate studies, some of which were ethically questionable, reached the conclusion, nowadays almost sensational, that the words and personality of the doctor may have a similar effect to that achieved with medication.
So we should not be surprised when the incontestable effects of bioresonance therapy are occasionally dismissed as scientifically ineffective. If routine medical modes of action which have been known for thousands of years have to be rediscovered, it is hardly surprising that the mode of action of our bioresonance cannot be understood with the scientific knowledge of the 19th century. This will be clarified in more detail in the following observations.
The biophysical mode of action of bioresonance therapy is based on electromagnetic interactions and is therefore also able to interact biophysically with the light of our life. To examine this relationship in greater depth, I will remind you of a number of facts relating to the biophysics of organismal regulation and neurophysiological integration.
The human body
approx. 50 trillion (1012) cells (organism)
approx. 500 billion (109) renewed every 24 hours
approx. 98% of all matter in three years
almost one quintillion (1018) biochemical processes
This demonstrates the incredible dynamism with which our transitory physical existence is reproduced every single second. The number of individual living cellular entities in our body equates to around ten thousand times the current population of the world. The number of almost one quintillion biochemical reactions per second corresponds to the age of our universe from the big bang to the present day, if these 13,000 million years are converted into seconds.
Three factors are essential for this gigantic metabolic process: the necessary substances, the energy required to transform them and the information regarding which substance must be at which location at which point in time. Only one of nature’s three fundamental forces can guarantee this huge demand for information at the required speed: light with its maximum critical velocity for material signals. The following overview will show the phenomenal significance of electromagnetic interactions, as the light of our lives.
LIGHT OF LIFE
(electromagnetic interaction)
sunlight + plants + CO2 + H2O 4 life
light — biochemistry 4 life
light — CNS/cerebral cortex > consciousness of self
light 4 IT’ 4 information age
“realisation”-3 new physical view of the world
The light of the sun is the source of life in the biosphere. Sunlight is accumulated biochemically in glucose through chlorophyll in green plants which act as the antennae of life on earth. This process requires an entropy gap between the energy-rich sunlight and the lower energy earth’s radiation into the universe. Only in this way is the free energy possible which is so vital for life and which Erwin Schrodinger referred to in his book “Was ist Leben [What is life]” as negentropy.
Bioenergetics is all based on redox processes which ultimately end oxidatively in our respiratory chain as a perfectly controlled hydrogen-oxygen reaction. Reduction is now understood as the gain of electrons and oxidation as the loss of electrons. The electrons in the biosphere originate from hydrogen atoms in water. The electrons lost by water are first accumulated in glucose. Subordinate biochemistry is based physically on these electrical charge carriers flowing into the highly complex membrane systems of living cells and their cascade-like potential gradients.
‘ Information technology
Without highly developed information technology, not only all these processes but our modern information society would be wholly inconceivable. Where would we be without electricity, the lifeblood of our industrial society, without the electromagnetic waves for our communications and, above all, without the light from our sun?
It therefore seems important to me to point out the following with due clarity. Light as the physical basis is just the one side, the objective side. We owe the technical exploitation to the extent achieved today to a highly subjective human aspect, the outstanding intellectual achievements of individuals such as Maxwell, Faraday, Hertz, Planck, Einstein, Schrodinger, to name but a few. While increasingly today we use the fruits of their labours without giving a second thought, even notable scientists pay too little attention to their profound ideological conclusions.
Their meticulous physical analysis of light enforced the theory of relativity and quantum theory which delivered the most significant and solid discoveries in the whole history of mankind. However, they not only allowed phenomenal technical progress but also led to significant intellectual enlightenment in the physical world view even as far as the fundamental concepts of space, time and matter.
Such a far-reaching revolution in the overall world view should therefore also open up a new dimension in terms of how we view man and his scientific essence.
Present day medicine relentlessly emphasises its scientific basis and assiduously makes use of all the technical possibilities it owes to the abovementioned theories. Yet these fundamental ideological discoveries are largely dismissed as irrelevant. As a result, we have to date seen no progress in a scientific extension towards a much needed holistic view of man in medicine.
I should now like to underpin this statement to some extent at least. To do so I must draw on some physics with a couple of diagrams and ask you to bear with me as the subject is really not simple. At least it isn’t if you attempt to follow Einstein’s directions, namely to portray everything as simply as possible, yet not too simply, i.e. not oversimplified.
In Newton’s mechanics-based world view, space on the one hand and time on the other provided the stage for physical processes. Through his theory of special relativity Einstein combined space and time in a four-dimensional continuum and showed that space, time and matter depend upon the state of motion of the observer and are therefore of relative importance.
In the diagram (above) the vertical double cone represents what is known as the light cone or causal cone. Causality describes the relation between cause and effect. This requires an exchange of signals between the two elements. The speed of light marks the upper limit for each material signal in the vacuum. This is the reason why all material relationships throughout the entire cosmos are located within the vertical light cone. Those relating to the past and present in the lower cone, those relating to the future in the upper cone. As time is of absolute significance sooner or later, Einstein described the material process in this inner area as time-like.
It is clear to see however that there is also an area outside the vertical light cone. Only decades later did it gradually become clearer what this involves from a physical viewpoint. The symbol ‘I’ (Psi) for the Schrodinger equation, an icon of quantum physics, was to provide an initial clue. At first however it was only clear that in no way could material causal relations exist in this area. The four-dimensional space-time continuum of an integrated world therefore comprises two areas linked by light: a material one within and a nonmaterial area outside the light cone. Einstein described the non-material causal area as space-like. It allows us humans to extend our conscious present in an intellectual manner.
This insight will not be surprising to us as humans endowed with intellect. However intellect appears to be distributed rather unequally between us humans and to be heavily influenced by material factors. It has been distributed very justly however for nobody has ever complained of having too little.
Be that as it may, it has been a physical fact for 110 years, thanks to Einstein’s theory of relativity, that there is a nonmaterial, in addition to a material, reality. It has since been demonstrated in experiments on numerous occasions that an interaction between these two complements of an integrated world can be achieved with the photon spin of light. As we know, our own intellectual realisations also materialise in a light-like manner (eg: EEG). This provides a good reason to examine possible conclusions which these physical discoveries offer for an extended view of man from the perspective of holistic medicine. The second diagram should make this easier to understand.
In the centre of our personal space-time stands our self-aware EGO. It lives in the present, the here and now, at all times. We can move around the space surrounding us at will. It is real for us. In contrast, time always runs in just one direction, from birth to death. Thanks to the intellectual extension of our consciously perceived present, we can remember past events and picture the future. However we can only ever experience the present.
Body-mind-complementarity Consequently a letter i, for imaginary, is placed before the time coordinate. Minkowski, Einstein’s mathematics teacher, thereby took account of the specific character of time. This also allows a mathematical reference to the most fascinating of all the features of our EGO: the lifelong retention of our personal identity, despite all the material changes to our body.
As explained earlier, light also makes our conscious perception possible through biophysics. Therefore the here and now of one’s self-aware EGO also forms the centre of our own personal light cone. Like our EGO, light always retains its physical identity in this four-dimensional continuum. It does not recognise time. The physical reason for this is indicated in the last line of the diagram. S2 is the invariance for each movement. It is zero for light, as the space and time component are an equal amount yet the opposite sign; the latter as a consequence of the imaginary light coordinate.
Please don’t let this formula bother you for you can get by without it. As I am sure some of you well know, when Einstein was just 17 he tried to imagine what would happen if he could ride on a beam
Prof. Dr. Dipl.-Ing. Steffen Schulz, Berlin, Germany
of light. He came to the conclusion: absolutely nothing. He only discovered the mathematical explanation above ten years later. In this early mental experiment Einstein tried to imagine how light sees itself, in other words, not how we see it. Perhaps this makes the perplexing conclusion and its reference to our EGO slightly easier to understand.
The lower light cone contains the entire cosmic past of our body. Consequently, for example, also that of the approx. one quintillion protons which, as H+, regulate the important pH of our blood. They have existed unchanged virtually since the big bang, only ever staying in our body for a very brief period, after which they — like the entire material remains of our physical existence – vanish in the cosmic eternity of the upper light cone.
DNA plays a central role in our body. It contains the entire evolution of life in the biosphere, coded in compressed molecular form. Its double helix has 3.2 billion nucleotides, arranged rather like the rungs of a rope ladder. As their number corresponds roughly to the years life has existed on earth, these rungs can symbolise its phylogenesis, similar to the growth rings in a tree trunk.
In the molecular mechanistic view of man DNA’s function is largely reduced to the genes, even if they represent only around 1.5%. How genes are supposed to control the incredible dynamism of almost one quintillion biochemical reactions per second in an holistic/integrated manner, remains unclear however. We can best surmise an answer through Prof Popps’ extremely worthwhile research on biophotons. This made it probable that DNA acts biophysically primarily like an antenna in the light-like process of the organism. Transmitter and receiver together could be a Bose-Einstein condensate of biophotons in the centre of DNA. A condensate such as this is described mathematically with a Schrodinger wave equation ir (Psi). Consequently I depicted its symbol in the non-material area and associated it with the notion of a space-like SELF.
The hypothesis of a non-material self, which complements our time-like EGO, has existed for thousands of years. This concept also proved to be indispensable for Sherrington (1936 Nobel prize for medicine) and Eccles (1963 Nobel prize for medicine), two of the most influential neurophysiologists of the 20th century. For these scientists were not content merely to investigate the important mechanisms of our nerve function, but endeavoured to position these in an appropriate general view of man.
In 1992, together with the physicist Beck, John Eccles published studies on quantum calculations on the synapses which he described as “the culmination of my lifelong search for the scientific explanation of dualism”. These results are also included in his book with the descriptive title “How the Self Controls its Brain” published in 1996. In it the Nobel prize-winner for medicine also complained of: “an entrenched materialist orthodoxy … that rises to defend its dogmas with a self-righteousness scarcely equalled in the ancient days of religious dogmatism.”
The medical view of man is still dominated by the concept of a dualism between body and mind. The mind and the soul mediating between the two is increasingly in danger of getting lost. This is one main reason for the unmistakeable call for a holistic approach to medicine.
In the diagram I therefore replaced the concept of a dividing duality with a linking complementarity. It has long been indispensable for us in complementary medicine. It was introduced for science back in the 1920s by the great Danish physicist Niels Bohr. Its significance at that time for physics can be seen in a quote from Erwin Schrodinger (1933 Nobel prize for physics) who discovered wave mechanics. He explained the resulting consequence as: “the whole force of the logical conflict between an either — or viewpoint (point mechanics) and a not only — but also viewpoint (wave mechanics) which faces us here.” (Schrodinger 1952)
This also aptly describes the situation in medicine today. A molecular mechanistic view of man only recognises either conventional or alternative medicine. Only a view of man which is extended holistically permits a harmonious not only conventional but also complementary medicine.
The Schrodinger wave equation still merits further comment due to its ideological significance. Back in 1952 its author himself said:
“The trusted opinion now is that everything — absolutely everything — is both particle and wave.”
Material particles, such as molecules, do not need any explanation, but quantum theory’s concept of waves probably does. This refers to very abstract waves in highdimensional complex space for, in quantum physics, everything material is always linked in a complex manner with something non-material. Every material quantum system is tangibly linked with a complementary non-material wave or state function, without exception.
This function simultaneously incorporates all the options available to the relevant system. It represents our mental knowledge of the system. We are familiar with something very similar from our everyday lives when we are faced with personal decisions. In such situations we mentally visualise all the options for action open to us. They are weighted differently according to our past experience. When we make our decision, this range of potential options is reduced to just one. In quantum physics this is known as a collapse of the wave function.
Even at the most basic level of nature, Schrodinger’s wave function displays qualities which are astonishingly similar to observations at the level of human perception. This includes in particular the quality of individuality. The quantum level here again refers to the significant difference between punctiform particles, such as atoms and molecules, and integral waves. To quote Erwin Schrodinger once more:
“Situations we observe force us, if we want to retain the notion of atoms, to exclude the last constituents of matter from the category of identifiable individuals …” … “Yet remarkably that characteristic, that one has to ascribe individuality to the wave phenomena, instead of to the corpuscle, is also found in elementary waves.” (E. Schrodinger 1952).
Bioresonance also uses electromagnetic wave phenomena, which can interact individually with biophotons in organisms. These highly specialised wave phenomena from quantum physics probably play a particular therapeutic role.
They could explain the resonant mode of action of bioresonance therapy in which organismal information is fed back with electromagnetic waves in a highly specific manner. Efficacy can immediately be verified very effectively with the familiar test methods. This gives the treatment its high individual specificity.
The individual specifics of each medical treatment are crucially important in a scientific assessment of its therapeutic effectiveness. Consequently evidence-based medicine’s claim to sole representation of the scientific viewpoint is hotly debated in the practising medical profession. Some time ago an article appeared in the Arzteblatt under the remarkable title “Evidence-based medicine angekommen, aber noch nicht zu Hause [Evidence-based medicine has arrived but is not yet familiar].”One reason for this was given as the fad that German medicine is rooted in a different culture from that in America. A culture which aims to degrade the unique human individual exclusively to the fate of a statistical group reminds me more of Wall Street than of humanistic medicine.
There is an antagonistic contradiction between individuality and objectivity based on statistics. Therefore the individuality of each person must also be taken into account by recognising evidence of efficacy which complements the statistical proof. It is based on patients’ established practice of “voting with their feet” and could be described as democratic proof of efficacy. The huge sums which patients covered by compulsory insurance are still prepared to pay for treatment which is claimed to be scientifically ineffective also back this up. In the physician-related field alone this figure was already over 8 billion Euros several years ago. In a society in which free self-determination and the dignity of every individual are fundamentally established as sacrosanct, these facts cannot be ignored scientifically either. Consequently this democratic proof of efficacy merits being investigated in a competent manner rather than just ignored.
When using methods which are supposedly not scientifically recognised, under no account must a specific risk be underestimated. If a doctor breaches his duty of care using a recognised method, he is at most held responsible. If this happens with a procedure which is not recognised, not only is the risk markedly increased. In addition any harm occurring to the patient may give welcome grounds to deduce that the method is not only ineffective but even harmful. Of course, in such cases the otherwise customary call for proof of a causal connection is generously waived.
Therefore bioresonance therapy must be used according to indication, in other words as a treatment to supplement, but not replace, the conventional medical options. Before being used therefore symptoms must be carefully clarified by a physician in each individual case and indicated medical measures ensured as a priority.
This is where dissimulating patients may set dangerous traps for us. For example, a patient who is justifiably afraid of being diagnosed with cancer, may suggest his symptoms which indicate this disease are harmless. Behind this lies the understandable desire to have the doctor confirm that his fears are unfounded. This can cause the therapist to be tempted to minimise differential diagnosis and possibly treat the patient prematurely with complementary methods or for too long. This may not only lead to considerable risks in the actual case being treated. It could also result in the reputation of bioresonance therapy being damaged by a connection being implied in a case such as this between a medical breach of duty of care with harm to the patient and the complementary method of treatment.
For example it appears conceivable that a patient dissimulating his non-specific abdominal symptoms is treated with BICOM® without careful medical diagnosis. If cancer is then diagnosed at the metastasising stage, the patient’s possible incurable state could be blamed on bioresonance therapy, catching the attention of the media. This would be unfair on bioresonance therapy in two respects.
Firstly, as a research establishment offering basic and advanced training, Regumed guarantees exemplary quality management in the indication-based use of bioresonance therapy. This 39th scientific Congress with participants from around the world also provides convincing proof of this.
Secondly, despite the limited weight of statistical methods, due attention has also been paid to this scientific method of evidence. The effectiveness of bioresonance therapy has also been proven with recognised scientific methods in a large number of clinical studies and experimental investigations.
On that note, I should like to return to the scientific principle uniting our conference, the physical means of providing bioresonance therapy: electromagnetic interaction (“light”). The concept of interaction has completely replaced matter in the physical world view. The quickest way to demonstrate this is through the concept of the atom, the original symbol of materialism. It is still the undeclared basis of molecular mechanistic medicine’s view of man. Erwin Schrodinger expressed this in a lecture in 1952 in the following words:
What atoms really are:
“Perhaps we should best think of them as relatively temporary structures within the wave field, whose form (and structural variety in the broadest sense of the word) is defined so clearly and sharply however and always repeatedly in the same way by the wave laws that it is as if they were substantial permanent beings.”
While we may remember the inconceivable dynamism of our metabolism and the key regulatory function of light in its organismal integration, the molecular mechanistic view of life appears biophysically in a new light.
What organisms really are:
“Perhaps we should best think of them as relatively temporary structures within the light-wave field, whose form (and structural variety in the broadest sense of the word) is defined so clearly and sharply however and always repeatedly in the same way by wave laws that it is as if they were substantial permanent beings.” After: E. Schrodinger (1952)
To sum up, the new biophysical discoveries should allow a holistic view of man by which, on the one hand, complementary methods of healing can be scientifically judged in a more appropriate manner and, on the other, science’s view of the world could be enlivened.
Now, at the end of my lecture, I should like to add a few observations on the subjective side of the scientific approach in medicine. I will do this through the example of two outstanding figures from the “Berlin School” who helped shape the basis of scientific medicine significantly over a century ago.
Medical science owes so much to Rudolf Virchow, that he was also designated “princeps medicorum” (prince of physicians) of the 19th century. I’ll mention simply by way of example his stimulus theory, especially regarding carcinogenesis, and also his cellular pathology. His principle of “omnis cellula e cellula (all cells come from cells)” revolutionised medical science and is even more topical than ever today with it being suggested that life could be designed in the lab with what is known as synthetic biology. The fact remains however that living cells always still need to be practiced upon for, without exception, all attempts to create life artificially have failed.
I will now demonstrate, through the example of Rudolf Virchow, the subjective condemnations that are possible even at the heart of scientific medicine.
To do so I will draw on the assessment of a second great figure in the history of Berlin’s Charite hospital, of whom I should first like to remind you. I am talking about August Bier, who took over Germany’s most important chair of surgery in 1907 when he succeeded the then father of modern surgery, Ernst von Bergmann. This although, as an unorthodox thinker, he had plenty of opposition. For his credo was: “Surgery is an admission that medicine has failed” or even “A good surgeon can be identified, not by what he operates on, but by what he doesn’t operate on”, by which he sought to emphasise the importance of establishing critically whether a particular treatment was indicated. At the time the word amongst the students was apparently: “If you want to experience something go to Sauerbruch’s lectures but, if you want to learn something, then go to Bier.”
His scientific commitment went well beyond surgery and even medicine. In his book “Die Seele [The Soul]” he examines philosophy in depth, yet also draws on his own experiments on animals. In this book he says of Rudolf Virchow, “I believe I am one of the few people who not only speak of Virchow but have also read his works”. From his own studies Bier deduced that Virchow was a vitalist, in other words was convinced that a specific life force existed. According to the current state of knowledge, this notion can be replaced by life information. In other words, information with molecular coding in DNA and animated by light waves.
When Bier wrote his book however, Virchow was branded as a heretic for being primarily responsible for the mechanistic view of the processes of life and disease. Therefore Bier “asked more than a dozen of these morally outraged writers where this was written in Virchow’s work. None of them could say, however, for the simple reason that nobody had read it. They just said they must have regarded Virchow as a materialist because it was widely known“.
I feel we can be reassured by this little foray into the history of medicine. If even the life’s work of a “princeps medicorum” can be misinterpreted at will according to general hearsay, we shouldn’t take it to heart too much if our work is misinterpreted. Especially not if here too, the morally outraged writers are short on proof as they also draw only on what is help up to be general knowledge rather than on competent expertise.
Through his life’s work August Bier merits being designated the first academic practitioner of holistic medicine. As for the enduring realisation of this ideal up to the present day, it is evident that the contributions towards this from the academic field of medical science are not nearly adequate. Significant achievement have been and are being made towards this by practitioners of complementary medicine. Today and over the next few day we will witness many important contributions from our bioresonance therapists.