Recent GMI Blogs

All articles by Annemarie Colbin, Ph.D.

How living things get to be what they are is a question that has occupied philosophers and scientists for a very long time. In the past two or three hundred years, the focus has been on what Gregor Mendel has called units of heredity, or the physical elements that are transmitted from parents to offspring. These are now called genes, and have become an integral part of the conversation about human beings and their health.
Our scientific dogma says that the latest research is the closest to the truth; yet as soon as new research comes out, it will be obsolete. This paradigm always ignores context. For example, for the past 15 years it has become assumed truth that a low fat diet is a healthy diet. The same people who thirty years ago used to urge us to eat plenty of meat and cheese, shifted to encourage us towards vegetables and low fat salad dressings