I will let you discover the digital biology presented by Jacques Benveniste, who died in December 2004. The next article will comment this text.

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Explaining digital biology is impossible without explaining its principle. The purpose of this text is not to report experimental results. Rather, it tries to explain to laymen, in the simplest terms, this radically new approach to biology. We hope it will be useful to all, scientists or not, who find it hard to "make the leap". Indeed, is it possible to believe that the specific activity of biologically-active molecules (e.g. histamine, caffeine, nicotine, adrenalin), not to mention the immunological signature of a virus or bacterium can be recorded and digitized using a computer sound card, just like an ordinary sound? Imagine the perplexity of Archimedes confronted with a telephone, and being told that by using it he could be heard on the other side of the world, were we not to explain the nature of sound waves or their translation into electromagnetism.

Life depends on signals exchanged among molecules. For example, when you get angry, adrenalin "tells" its receptor, and it alone (as a faithful molecule, it talks to no other) to make your heart beat faster, to contract superficial blood vessels, etc.. In biology, the words "molecular signal" are used very often. Yet, if you ask even the most eminent biologists what the physical nature of this signal is, they seem not even to understand the question, and stare at you wide-eyed. In fact, they've cooked up a rigorously Cartesian physics all their own, as far removed as possible from the realities of contemporary physics, according to which simple contact (Descarte's laws of impact, quickly disproved by Huygens) between two coalescent structures creates energy, thus constituting an exchange of information. For many years, I believed and recited this catechism without realizing its absurdity, just as mankind did not realize the absurdity of the belief that the sun circles the earth.

The truth, based on facts, is very simple. It does not require any "collapse of the physical or chemical worlds." That molecules vibrate, we have known for decades. Every atom of every molecule and every intermolecular bond-the bridge that links the atoms-emits a group of specific frequencies. Specific frequencies of simple or complex molecules are detected at distances of billions of light-years, thanks to radio-telescopes. Biophysicists describe these frequencies as an essential physical characteristic of matter, but biologists do not consider that electromagnetic waves can play a role in molecular functions themselves. We cannot find the words "frequency" or "signal" (in the physical sense of the term) in any treatise on molecular interactions in biology, not to speak of the term "electromagnetic," use of which would be - at least in France - a cause for excommunication of any offending biologist by the scientific Papal Office...

Like Archimedes, I would have liked to have had a brilliant idea in my bathtub: "Eureka, the vibrations of molecules don't exist for them to dance the salsa at a Saturday night ball; vibrations are the tools of their trade, which allow them to send instructions to the next molecule down the line in the cascade of events which govern biological functions, and probably, to a large extent, chemical ones as well." Unfortunately, this was not the case. I followed a purely experimental approach. After eight years of research, around 1991, my experiments showed that we could transfer specific molecular signals by using an amplifier and electromagnetic coils. In July, 1995, I recorded and replayed these signals using a multimedia computer. A computer sound card only records frequencies up to about 20,000 Hz. In the course of several thousand experiments, we have led receptors (specific to simple or complex molecules) to "believe" that they are in the presence of their favorite molecules by playing the recorded frequencies of those molecules. In order to arrive at this result, two operations are necessary: 1) record the activity of the substance on a computer; 2) "replay" it to a biological system. sensitive to the same substance. Therefore, there is every reason to think that when a molecule itself is in the presence of its receptor, it does the same thing: it emits frequencies which the receptor is capable of recognizing.

Which means that a molecular signal can be efficiently represented by a spectrum of frequencies between 20Hz and 20,000 Hz, the same range as the human hearing or music. For several hundred thousand years, human beings have been relating sound frequencies to a biological mechanism: the emotions. Composers of background music for supermarkets or elevators are practicing neuropsychology without knowing it. High-pitched rapid sounds engender lightness of spirit, high-pitched slow sounds, sweetness, sounds both deep and rapid awaken the fighting spirit, while deep, slow sounds invoke serious emotions, sadness and mourning. These are fundamentally cerebral physico-chemical phenomena, triggered by defined frequencies. We do nothing more than this when we transmit pre-recorded molecular activities to biological systems.

Therefore, one may hypothesize that biological systems function like radio sets, by coresonance. If you tune a receiver to 92.6 MHz, you tune in Radio-This, because the receiver and the transmitter vibrate at the same frequency. If we change the setting a little to, say, 92.7, we no longer receive Radio-This, but Radio-That instead.

These advances in understanding the inmost mechanism of molecular recognition and signaling do not overturn the science of biology, and even less those of physics and chemistry. We have taken nothing away from classic descriptions, but only taken a step forward by adding to the present body of knowledge. This is the normal course of scientific progress, and there is no reason for it to provoke imprecations and anathema.

The electromagnetic nature of the molecular signal sheds light on many shadowy areas of biology. We can now understand how millions of biological molecules can communicate (at the speed of light), each with its own corresponding molecule, and it alone, the basic requirement for the functioning of biological systems...and why minute chemical modifications produce considerable functional consequences, something "structural" biologists are at a loss to explain. In deciding that only structures can have an action, biologists find themselves in a pre-Newtonian world where the movement of celestial bodies is described by Ptolemy in terms of epicycles. Hence the inability of contemporary biology to provide answers to the major pathologies of the end of this century (my article in Le Monde, May 22, 1996, which has not been challenged to date). The passage from the rigid biology of structures to one of information traveling at the speed of light can be accomplished without a "revolution." Contrary to what is stupidly claimed by scientific gossips, recording the activity of molecules no more implies denying their existence (after all, molecule-specific electromagnetic messages must come from specific molecules) than it does denying the law of mass action, according to which the effect is directly proportional to the number of molecules. One might as well expect a singer to disappear by recording his voice! In other words, we eliminate neither the light-switch nor the light bulb; we only say that a wire with a current of electrons connects the two. We are not in another, electromagnetic world which we are substituting for the old molecular world. We capture, copy, transfer-and soon will modify-electromagnetic signals emitted by molecules in the course of their normal functioning.

What about water in all this? It is the vehicle for information. This cannot be avoided, since there are 10,000 water molecules in the human body for every molecule of protein. There is no problem with this either; a submarine communicates with its base via low-frequency electromagnetic waves, not with megahertz frequencies, which do not penetrate water. We have recently completed very simple experiments showing that a molecule at a normally active concentration does not work in a medium devoid of water. Adding water is not enough to restore activity; it must be "informed." In other words, when molecules trigger a biological effect, they are not directly transmitting the signal. The final job is done by perimolecular water which relays and possibly amplifies the signal. Sound is not directly created by a compact disc. The latter carries data which is audible only after being amplified by an electronic system.

The "memory of water?" It is more mysterious, but no more so than the fact that a compound formed from two gases should be liquid at normal temperature and pressure, and dilate as it cools. Coherent domains with laser-like properties have been described in water (E. del Giudice, G. Preparata, G. Vitiello (1988) 'Water as a free electric dipole laser', Phys. Rev. Lett. 61:1085-1088). More recently, a unique type of stable (non-melting) ice crystal that maintains an electrical field has been identified and characterized in water. Truly, unemployment should not be a worry for physicists! Nonetheless, water is not our subject of investigation. What interests us is not the nature of the magnetic medium and how it functions, but the message recorded in it, which can be copied and transmitted. In the light of our experimental results, we are confident in our belief that we have elucidated the physical nature of the molecular signal. The principle is as simple as exploding a mixture of air and gasoline, but the consequences are enormous.

We present them in detail elsewhere. Here is a summary:

At the present time, the only way to identify a molecule is to carry a sample, most often obtained invasively or even destructively, to a laboratory. With the digital method, we dispose of a signal which can be instantly transmitted and analyzed at the other end of the world by classic means of telecommunication. Using this method, the detection of toxic substances, proteins (antigens, antibodies, prions) or molecular complexes (parasites, bacteria, viruses, abnormal cells) should become possible without physical sampling. It is noteworthy that no in vivo detection methods of prions presently exists, with well-known epidemiological and economic consequences. The detection of antigens and antibodies, just to mention this field, represents a considerable share of the activity of clinical biology laboratoires. Moreover, some results seem to indicate that these methods should be applicable to the chemical industry and to environmental surveillance, e.g. to detecting, at a distance, micro-organisms or products from genetically modified plants.

A final question: why are scientists so opposed to the evolution of science? Is it to defend their piece of turf? Why, in the name of intangible dogmas, which the history of science has shown to be so often ephemeral, do they reject advances which represent progress for their discipline? Do these advances appear to threaten their all-too-fragile certitudes? Such questions are not just philosophical, because these people are respected counselors, advisers to political and industrial decision-makers. They orient-most often by hampering-new applications flowing from scientific progress. I don't know where these mental blocks come from, but they are, in theory at least, irreconcilable with a scientist's function. Here is a quote (translated from the French edition of Encyclopedia Universalis, taken from the article on Mechanism) which shows, alas, that those blocks are eternal:

Four centuries later, we hear the same words: "there must be molecules" (François Jacob)-that is, contact, forceful impulsion-according to our sages of science, still frozen in the Cartesian mechanistic dogma: the same denial of action at a distance, and the same accusations of a return to obscurantism.

Descartes versus Newton. We're in good company...

January 8, 1998; mod. June 14, 1998

J. Benveniste

The physician's high and only mission is to restore the sick to health, to cure, as it is termed.

§ 2

The highest ideal of cure is rapid, gentle and permanent restoration of the health, or removal and annihilation of the disease in its whole extent, in the shortest, most reliable, and most harmless way, on easily comprehensible principles.

§ 9

In the healthy condition of man, the spiritual vital force (autocracy), the dynamis that animates the material body (organism), rules with unbounded sway, and retains all the parts of the organism in admirable, harmonious, vital operation, as regards both sensations and functions, so that our indwelling, reason-gifted mind can freely employ this living, healthy instrument for the higher purpose of our existence.

§ 14

There is, in the interior of man, nothing morbid that is curable and no invisible morbid alteration that is curable which does not make itself known to the accurately observing physicians by means of morbid signs and symptoms - an arrangement in perfect conformity with the infinite goodness of the all-wise Preserver of human life.

§ 19

Now, as diseases are nothing more than alterations in the state of health of the healthy individual which express themselves by morbid signs, and the cure is also only possible by a change to the healthy condition of the state of health of the diseased individual, it is very evident that medicines could never cure disease if they did not possess the power of altering man's state of health which depends on sensations and functions; indeed, that their curative power must be owing solely to this power they possess of altering man's state of health.

§ 20 

This spirit-like power to alter man's state of health (and hence to cure diseases) which lies hidden in the inner nature of medicines can in itself never be discovered by us by a mere effort of reason; it is only by experience of the phenomena it displays when acting on the state of health of man that we can become clearly cognizant of it.

§ 22

it follows that, for the totality of the symptoms of the disease to be cured, a medicine must be sought which (according as experience shall prove whether the morbid symptoms are most readily, certainly, and permanently removed and changed into health by similar or opposite medicinal symptoms1) have the greatest tendency to produce similar or opposite symptoms.

§ 23

Now, however, in all careful trials, pure experience,1 the sole and infallible oracle of the healing art, teaches us that actually that medicine which, in its action on the healthy human body, has demonstrated its power of producing the greatest number of symptoms similar to those observable in the case of disease under treatment, does also, in doses of suitable potency and attenuation, rapidly, radically and permanently remove the totality of the symptoms of this morbid state, that is to say (§ 6 - 16), the whole disease present, and change it into health; and that all medicines cure, without exception, those diseases whose symptoms most nearly resemble their own, and leave none of them uncured.

The greater strength of the artificial diseases producible by medicines is, however, not the sole cause of their power to cure natural disease. In order that they may effect a cure, it is before all things requisite that they should be capable of producing in the human body an artificial disease as similar as possible to the disease to be cured, which, with somewhat increased power, transforms to a very similar morbid state the instinctive life principle, which in itself is incapable of any reflection or act of memory. It not only obscures, but extinguishes and thereby annihilates the derangement caused by the natural disease. This is so true, that no previously existing disease can be cured, even by Nature herself, by the accession of a new dissimilar disease, be it ever so strong, and just as little can it be cured by medical treatment with drugs which are incapable of producing a similar morbid condition in the healthy body.

§ 53

The true mild cures take place only according to the homoeopathic method, which, as we have found (§§ 7-25) by experience and deduction, is unquestionably the proper one by which through art the quickest, most certain and most permanent cures are obtained since this healing art rests upon an eternal infallible law of nature.

The pure homoeopathic healing art is the only correct method, the one possible to human art, the straightest way to cure, as certain as that there is but one straight line between two given points.

These incontrovertible truths, which spontaneously offer themselves to our notice and experience, explain to us the beneficial action that takes place under homoeopathic treatment; while, on the other hand, they demonstrate the perversity of the antipathic and palliative treatment of diseases with antagonistically acting medicines.1

§ 108

There is, therefore, no other possible way in which the peculiar effects of medicines on the health of individuals can be accurately ascertained - there is no sure, no more natural way of accomplishing this object, than to administer the several medicines experimentally, in moderate doses, to healthy persons, in order to ascertain what changes, symptoms and signs of their influence each individually produces on the health of the body and of the mind; that is to say, what disease elements they are able and tend to produce1, since, as has been demonstrated (§§ 24-27), all the curative power of medicines lies in this power they possess of changing the state of man's health, and is revealed by observation of the latter.

His father, an industrious but fortune-less painter on porcelain near Dresden, always prevent anyone not to take anything on trust, but in every case to act as reflection told him was for the best `‘Prove all things, hold fast that which is good,’’ was the substance of his advice. By this advice Hahnemann profited, and, notwithstanding his father’s prohibition to study, he pursued his strong inclination to do so in spite of all opposition and on occasion when it was thought he was sound asleep, he was consuming the midnight oil over his books, in a lamp which he had himself constructed out of clay, as he was apprehensive being discovered had he used one of the household candlesticks.

Twenty thalers (about 3 sterling) and his father’s blessing, were all he carried with him from Meissen to Leipzig, where it was his intention to study medicine. He was allowed free access to the various classes, and managed to support himself by teaching French and German and by translating books form the English. Form Leipzig he journeyed to Vienna, in order to witness the practice of medicine in the hospitals there, and had the good fortune to secure the friendship of Dr. Von Quarin, who treated him like a son, took great pains to teach him the art of medicine. By some roguery or other, however, lost the greater part of his money here, and so, after a sojourn in Vienna of only three quarters of a year, he found himself forced to accept the situation of family physician and librarian to the Governor of Transylvania, with whom he resided in Hermannstadt two years, and whence he removed to graduate in Erlangen, in 1779.

During the last years he lived in Dresden and the neighboring village of Lockwits he published many chemical works, the most celebrated of which is a treatise upon poisoning by arsenic, which id quoted to this day as an authority by the best writers on toxicology. This was probably the period he alludes to, in his letter to Hufeland, as that when he retired disgusted with the uncertainty of medical practice and devoted himself to chemistry and literature.

In 1790 he translated Cullen’s Materia Medica and discovered the fever-producing property of cinchona bark ; which was to him what the falling apply was to Newton, and the swinging lamp in the Baptistery at Pisa, to Galileo. From this single experiments his mood appears to have been impressed by the conviction, that the pathogenetic effects of medicines would give the key to their therapeutic power. He seems, how ever, to have contented himself with hunting up in the works of the ancient authors for hints respecting the physiological action of different substances, and to have tested them but sparingly, if at all, on his own person or on his friends; and in his researches, to the drugs than for those minute shades of symptoms which we find he so carefully recorded in his later years.

However, to return to our history Hahnemann seems to have had little or no opportunity to test his ideas by practice in Leipzic and the little village of Stottorits close by, and must have been completely occupied with his chemical lucubration’s and translation; for he wrote at his period a large number of chemical essays, and translated several chemical and other works, besides Cullen’s just named.

The physicians of Konigslutter, jealous of the rising fame of the innovator, incited the apothecaries to bring an action against him far interfering with their privileges by dispensing his own medicines. It was in vain Hahnemann appealed to their letter and spirit of the law regulating the apothecaries business and argued, that their privileges only extended to the compounding of medicines, but that every man, and therefore still more every medical man, had the right to give or sell uncompounded drugs, which were the only things he employed, and which he administered, moreover gratuitously. All in vain; the apothecaries and their allies, his jealous brethren, were too powerful for him; and contrary to law. Justice, and common sense, Hahnemann, who had shown himself a master of the apothecaries’ art by his learned and laborious Pharmaceutical Lexicon, was prohibited from dispensing his own simple medicines.

During the last year of his residence in Konigslutter he witnessed a severe epidemic of scarlet fever, and made his glorious discovery of the prophylactic power of belladonna in this disease, which alone would have sufficed to make his name remembered with gratitude by posterity. Knowing the power of belladonna to produce a state similar to the first stage of scarlet fever, he used it with great success at that period of the disease, and whilst his mind was occupied with the great remedial virtue he observed it to possess, a circumstance occurred which led him to believe that it was not only a curative, but a preventive medicine for that malady.

"Reader; you have purchased this book thinking to find therein a royal road to the practice of physic, but you are miserably mistaken to believe there can be any such short cut: skill in practice can only be gained by careful, unwearied, and honest study; by having a perfect knowledge of the curative instruments you have to yield, and by an accurate observation of the characteristic symptoms of disease. As for the contents of this book, they are the grossest imposition ever palmed upon man, a confused jumble of unknown drugs- mostly poisons mixed together in what are called prescriptions, each ingredient of which is dignified by some imposing name that is meant to express to qualities it should possess and the part it should play, but none of which possesses the qualities attributed to it nor will obey, even in the slightest degree, he order that are given it. Every prescription contains in it a multitude of anarchical elements that totally disqualify it for any orderly action whatever. The best councel it can given you, my simple-minded reader, is to put the main body of this book into the fire; but by all means preserve the preface; it may serve you as a standard for judging of the pretensions of similar pretentious books, of which there be, I am sorry to think, many, too many in the market just now, but which we shell do our best, with God’s help, to rid the world of.’’ (Traditional medicine book preface from Samuel Hahnemann)

Modern medical science rests upon a Greek foundation. The Naturalist philosophers were the first to separate medicine from any divine influences, during the sixth century B.C.

 Among these pioneers, we can distinguish:

- Pythagore who defined 4 components of our body: air, water, fire and ground,

- Alcméon who was the first to dissect animals and discovered the optic nerves.

We have to wait one century for Hippocrates drawing up a medical protocol for patients. Today, all physicians swear on the text of a man who thought that we were a set of various energies and elements:

- four fundamental elements (fire, water, ground and air),

- four characters (heat, cold, dryness and the wet one),

- four moods (blood, the lymph or phlegm, the yellow bile and the black bile).

The first human dissections took place during the Third century B.C with Alexandrian anatomists. They were then able to study neurology, vascular system and brain. Nevertheless, Greeks were always impregnated of mysticism and mythology. They mainly refused these discoveries which upset their culture.

Roman Empire rise exported and spread this new medicine all over the “Old world”. Gynaecology and obstetrics were then developed, with the first sign of possible abortion.

It is during the first century that Celse writes the first complete work on medicine. It distinguishes three types of care:

- diet therapy,

- drug therapy,

- surgical operation.

First hospitals appeared in , during the fourth century. Opened thanks to Christian charity, they especially look after leprosy. The first-, most famous- and best medicine schools were located in Arabian lands.

We can reach an infinite number of therapies. Occidental medicine proposes as many specialities as of body sites, senses and psychic disorders. Alternative medicines offer as many therapies as individuals: personal development, acupuncture, massage, magnetism, channelling, reiki, etc. Each one, more or less seriously, promise to keep or find health.

And what is health, exactly?

On the website of French Ministry of Health, you won’t find any definition of health. How strange. It promises to give you something that gets no definition.

According to the World Health Organization, health is a state of complete physical, mental and social wellbeing, and does not consist only of one absence of disease or infirmity. (Constitution of the World Health Organization, such as adopted by the international Conference on Health, New York, June 19-22, 1946; signed on July 22, 1946 by the representatives of 61 States).

If we understand this definition in a strict way, who can say "I am in perfect health"? Almost nobody. Thus, we all have disorders. Happy to learn it...

Let’s have a look at oriental medicine. More subjective than Western medicine, its philosophy consists in reaching for energy balance: Yin and Yang for Chinese medicine, balance of 3 somatic energies (the bile, mucus and wind) for Tibetan medicine. These concepts may look strange for the uninitiated ones, because quite far from our Cartesian concepts. The main problem is that no scientific tools can measure those energy effects yet and thus, make it hard to demonstrate any significant effect. Moreover, depending on the therapist relevance and on the relation between therapist and patient, the success of these Eastern techniques is more uncertain than Western medicine. Nevertheless, considering how long those techniques have been in existence and their growing worldwide success, their philosophy strikes a chord to a lot of human beings, even scientifically misunderstood or denied. 

It’s quite “amazing” seeing that clinicians often die from a disease related to their own speciality: cardiac problem for cardiologists, cerebral degeneration or strokes for neurologists, cancer for the cancer specialists, etc. I don’t know any study that had focussed any attention to this but, in any case, this is an observation that is quite admitted in hospitals. Strange...

On the other hand, it is not rare to hear that spiritual guides suffer from this disease, or this other one. However recognized for their deep knowledge of the world and the relevance of their remarks, that does not prevent from any physical disease.

Being a “master” of physical body or of spirit / soul / energies does not prevent from anything. So, what is health? Perhaps, we have a wrong point of view.

It appears that all our lives consist in reaching a new health state which can be a mix between physical, mental and social well-being. For mental one, we can introduce various types of energies indexed by Eastern medicines. We all had experiences or tests in our lives which make us evolve/ grow up. It builds our psychic and social health that also influences our physical health. Theoretical sciences tell us that the world is in constant evolution, nothing is fixed, everything always changes. Our body and our mental take part of this process. Many people say "thanks" to their disease, they discover a new of thinking, a new meaning to their life.

Health is nothing else but a goal to achieve. But the main goal of our lives is the process to get there, to understand something ... What ?