Biotechnology is a bluff! Part two

Pavel Poluyan – a scientist from Krasnoyarsk says: “Biotechnology is a bluff!” He claims that all talks about the so-called biotechnology were nothing but a commercial trick. Our correspondent had an interview with this maverick of science.

You probably know what acupuncture is.

It is believed that impact on definite spots on the body can cure diseases. It is right. This is called reflexotherapy. But doctors using the method have just a vague idea of why and how medicinal effect appears.

What is the secret of acupuncture?

As is known, regulation of the human body is realized by nervous chains, nervous tracts inside human body. If a signal appears to inform of failures of some organ, in response a signal is sent to bring everything in order. So, as it turned out, such reaction signals appear not only inside our body. When some organ fails, it often happens that some nerve-ending on the skin inflames and to be assuaged with a response regulative signal. To put it in plain words, the spot on the body itches and needs to be scratched with something sharp. This is the way the medicine of the East determined all spots on the body to be pressed in acupuncture.

You may have an experiment: try to relax completely lying in bed after taking a bath. Then you are sure to feel that some spots on your body need to be scratched. My recommendation, do what they “ask”, and it is to be of help for your body in curing of regulation failures. You may start this self-treatment method this very evening, and results are sure to surprise you. But there is a popular belief that palms itch because they feel you are soon to get money…

Unfortunately, our civilization and its mercantile values made people forget some important things; biophysics reopens them just now. I am proud of my personal contribution in it.

However, it would be unjust to criticize achievements civilization brought. So-called high-frequency therapy has recently become really very popular. Experiments revealed that a slight external action of high-frequency electromagnetic field on human brain recovers a normal frequency resonance between the cell membranes, the good health that gets worn out over our whole life. I think, these biophysics researches have good prospects.

We have been asked to be careful, have been scared with genetic mutations. And now you are speaking about influence on human brain.

There is a great difference. I mean regulative physical parameters of brain work as a physical system. We do not mention neither soul nor thinking, but just the material substance that helps human thinking work. On the whole, they are connected the same way as we have software and hardware in computers. When we amend computer electronic systems, we do not affect purity of the programs.

However, I agree with you on the whole, caution and fundamental concept are necessary here. I would like to stress once again that biophysics is a science based on a more advanced theory. As for physics, it is more defined. We know more even about interaction of elementary particles, than about influence of genotype on formation of growing organism.

Wait a moment! But bio-fields, telepathic waves belong to biophysics as well. And the sphere is very much promising as well. Why is it often called a pseudo-science?

It is sometimes correct to call it a pseudo-science because much charlatanism is about it. But trust me, biophysics has also got real scientists who carry out important investigations.

We know little of such investigations. And no Nobel Prizes have been given to scientists of the sphere.

There is the most interesting thing about biotechnology. The matter is, different “secret” sciences have got a special concept, a science about state secret protection. It is a collection of technological principles used to conceal the most promising investigations from rivals. For example, sometimes deadlock problems are boomed, and outdated scientific achievements are widely praised.

Sometimes even curious situations occur. A Committee for “struggle against a pseudo-science” was opened at the Russian Academy of Sciences, that protests against pseudo-scientific publications in the media. And it never occurred to academicians that publications of this kind that appear in the press are nonrandom.

To tell the truth, publications of this kind, I mean pseudo-scientific publications, often come from abroad as well. Let us recollect publications about Pentagon’s experiments on changing the time, and about USA owning extraterrestrial technologies. People are sometimes just openly fooled with such publications.

On the other hand, we should be indulgent toward mass media: indeed, media were created for entertaining, and people are especially interested in publications that easily agrees with the stereotypes thrust on them. Do you really meant that the bluff about bio-technologies serves a cover for really promising biophysical researches?

Yes, this may be understood this way. Even secret researches mean development of science, sooner or later results of such investigations are made public. And the bluff about bio-technologies may turn into a serious tragedy. Scientists interfere wit the mechanisms of life, sometimes people even do not have right understanding about them and can hardly foresee consequences of such interference. Sometimes not more advertising, but warnings are required.

I would not dare to object to it. We spoke much about prospects in development of science, responsibility of scientists, promotional myths and state secrets. Could you please sum up the conversation?

Once I came across a really curious metaphor by an investigator of scientific oddities who said, science is like a drill geologist going deeper into the Earth in searches for something new. At that drilling machines are getting more complicated and expensive. At that, a great bulk of extracted rock is practically not investigated. But if we examine the rock, we can find an unbelievable crystal, that many drillers are dreaming of.

So, my slogan is very simple: the most important thing in science nowadays is not to move ahead and ahead without much thinking, but put in order everything discovered earlier. There is nothing more precise than the right theory.

Pavel Poluyan was interviewed by Vadim Pavlov

Translated by Maria Gousseva

Read the original in Russian: http://www.pravda.ru/main/2002/06/05/42266.html