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Americans reach into their pockets twice as much as the next most charitable country according to a November 2006 comparison done by the Charities Aid Foundation, and in that year, 2006, Americans donated an estimated $295.02 billion (emphasis added)—up from $283.05 billion in 2005.1 “It tells you something about American culture that is unlike any other country,” says Claire Gaudiani, a professor at NYU’s Heyman Center for Philanthropy and author of The Greater Good: How Philanthropy Drives the American Economy and Can Save Capitalism.2, 3

And the generosity of spirit that is such an American hallmark can be found at every level of the culture. Even the poor give, and of that nearly $300 billion, individuals and families gave a combined 75.6% of the total, with bequests that rose to 83.4%.4 As a percentage of gross domestic product, the Americans were first at 1.7%, with the British in second place with 0.73%.1 Think about that number for a moment—$295 billion. That tells us that as individuals and families, we spent over $24.5 billion a month serving that which is good and life affirming as we understand it. That is twice what our government spends each month on the Iraq War. Is it any wonder we are a nation in conflict?

Explore: The Journal of Science and Healing
November 2008 (Vol. 4, Issue 6, Pages 357-358)

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Migration. The word evokes for me, and perhaps for you, images from the Bible. Charlton Heston’s Moses leading the Jews out of Egypt, across the Red Sea, and into the desert that lies beyond. Masses of people collectively on the move with common purpose, bringing with them all their goods and chattels. Never expecting to return. More than war, more than climate catastrophe, more than pandemics—migrations are a force for change. And this is as true for first world countries like the United States, Europe, or Japan, as it is for developing nations like China or Third World countries such as the nations of Africa.

Migrations come in two varieties: glacial and volcanic. The 1994 Tutsi flood that poured out of Rwanda and the several million non-Islamic Sudanese forced from their villages by the progovernment Janjaweed militias are volcanic migrations—violent ejections of populations based on immediate crisis. The volcanic time frame is short term, because just as the Rwandans—both Hutu and Tutsi—came back as soon as it was possible, those ejected by a volcanic migration do not surrender their allegiance to their homeland and always hope to return. Theirs is the commonsense response of simple people caught in the ravenous jaws of some greater political purpose.

Publication History: Explore: The Journal of Science and Healing
March 2009 (Vol. 5, Issue 2, Pages 74-76)

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Americans reach into their pockets twice as much as the next most charitable country according to a November 2006 comparison done by the Charities Aid Foundation, and in that year, 2006, Americans donated an estimated $295.02 billion (emphasis added)—up from $283.05 billion in 2005.1 “It tells you something about American culture that is unlike any other country,” says Claire Gaudiani, a professor at NYU’s Heyman Center for Philanthropy and author of The Greater Good: How Philanthropy Drives the American Economy and Can Save Capitalism.2, 3

And the generosity of spirit that is such an American hallmark can be found at every level of the culture. Even the poor give, and of that nearly $300 billion, individuals and families gave a combined 75.6% of the total, with bequests that rose to 83.4%.4 As a percentage of gross domestic product, the Americans were first at 1.7%, with the British in second place with 0.73%.1 Think about that number for a moment—$295 billion. That tells us that as individuals and families, we spent over $24.5 billion a month serving that which is good and life affirming as we understand it. That is twice what our government spends each month on the Iraq War. Is it any wonder we are a nation in conflict?

The biggest chunk of the money, $96.82 billion, or 32.8%, goes to religious organizations. The second largest slice, $29.56 billion, or 13.9%, goes to education, including gifts to colleges, universities, and libraries.

Forty-three percent of Americans are churched (Table 1). It is the largest number and percentage of the population in our history—in colonial times about 12% were affiliated with a church—and the religious views of this group dominate the public political conversation, oppressively to some.4

Publication History: Explore: The Journal of Science and Healing
November 2008 (Vol. 4, Issue 6, Pages 357-358)

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I heard the crying before I saw who it was. Walking down the quiet corridor, my footsteps echoing on the tiles, the only other sound was the rhythmic sobbing. It was a strange sound for an office building at midnight. Walking toward my lab, the sound increased, and I could finally tell from which office it was coming. As I drew abreast of his door, which was open, I looked to the left and saw the burly, heavily muscled man dressed in leather, and although his nearly shaved head was bent down and turned away from me, I knew immediately who it was. Guy was a licensed clinical social worker whose therapy practice was limited exclusively to gay men mostly in the S-M community.

He heard me pass and looked over with a wan smile, tears streaming down his face. “Didn’t know anyone else was still here,” he said.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“Look at this,” he said gesturing to the large notebook I could see was his appointment schedule, which lay open in his lap.

“Thirty two, Stephan. Thirty two. That’s how many I have buried. I feel like I practice on a battlefield, and my clients are disappearing in death, one by one.”

Publication History: Explore: The Journal of Science and Healing
September 2008 (Vol. 4, Issue 5, Pages 300-301)

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Sheila, a tough-minded New York career newspaperwoman turned magazine writer, prided herself on her cynical view on life and her ability to not be taken in. She got an assignment from her magazine to do a story on Mother Teresa and welcomed the opportunity.

“I thought she was a fraud, a genius at public relations maybe, but I disliked her conservative theology, which I thought demeaned women, and I found her constant involvement with the rich and famous very suspect. I arranged to join her and spent more than a week traveling with her and watching her at one of her hospices. My first impression never changed. I disagreed with almost everything she had to say about religion. I found her views about God depressing, and her vision about the place of women in the church almost medieval. At the same time from the very first moment I was in her presence, I had this overpowering urge to call the magazine and tell them that I wasn’t coming back; that I wanted to give myself to Mother Teresa’s work. It left me confused and ecstatic” (private communication between Stephan A. Schwartz and Sheila, March 23, 1989).

Publication History: Explore: The Journal of Science and Healing
May 2009 (Vol. 5, Issue 3, Pages 142-145)

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By the time we get there it is already a raucous party. The elderly Freeland Hall on Whidbey island, off the coast of Seattle, with its walls and ceiling made of short strips of ancient pine boards, vibrates with the noise. Two hundred fifty people have packed themselves in tonight to eat a simple box dinner on folding tables and watch six men make fools of themselves. One of them will be voted Mr South Whidbey. The voting is done by buying votes, in the form of business card–sized bits of paper, for $1 a card. There is much encouragement to buy as many cards as possible.

As I sit there eating my chicken salad, men in odd outfits—one wears a kind of apron upon which is airbrushed a nude female form with a fig leaf, another is got up as Abe Lincoln—circulate with cardboard beer six-pack carriers. Where the beer would be there are paper cups with the names of the contestants, who are also wearing improbable outfits and who range in age from one man in his early 30s wearing a kilt and sporting a chain saw—sort of like one of the Village People seen by someone on a bad drug trip—to an octogenarian dressed as a 1920s Parisian boulevardier.

Publication History: Explore: The Journal of Science and Healing
January 2010 (Vol. 6, Issue 1, Pages 15-16)

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After the American Revolution intellectuals, working from drawing rooms on both sides of the Atlantic, thought the colonies would eventually replicate Britain’s power structure based on large land ownership and an entrenched leadership class. There was more land than anyone in Europe had ever seen and, amongst the leadership, Washington, Jefferson, Mason, Madison and a host of other founders lived the country life. Even city rich such as Robert Morris owned and speculated in land. Benjamin Franklin, however, although often involved in land schemes, did not think the British agrarian model—even in its more noble Jeffersonian variant—would prevail. The reason he did not was because his life had been very different from the other founders. They all were country gentry or urban upper middle class professionals. He was a working class “leather apron man” in the slang of his day, was proud of it, and never concealed his roots, no matter the circumstances.

Publication History: Explore: The Journal of Science and Healing
November 2009 (Vol. 5, Issue 6, Pages 327-329)

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“After a spell of two days in hospital following what amounts to a heart attack, I returned home and was shortly thereafter sent a document telling me my insurer refused to pay any of the $17,000+ bill.” My friend Daryl (I have changed his name to preserve his privacy), a highly sophisticated and notably brilliant writer, said all this to me in an e-mail when I asked him how he was doing. He went on. “This is larcenous and disgraceful behavior; I’ve been paying ever increasing monthly premiums for years, and it is beyond belief that the insurer should now refuse to meet its responsibilities.” Daryl had come here from another industrialized country where healthcare was considered a right; this was the first time he had asked anything of his insurer, and his disbelief was tinged with deep vexation.

“When my attorney wife called them to protest, she was told cheerfully that this notice had been sent out routinely ‘before the situation has even been assessed’ and hence to ignore it—for the moment. Then I got notified that a crucial medication I have had prescribed for some years was being disallowed even though my specialist wrote the requested authorization for it at the insurance company’s demand.”

Publication History: Explore: The Journal of Science and Healing
July 2009 (Vol. 5, Issue 4, Pages 197-199)

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What could be more natural than wanting a healthy beautiful baby? Has there ever been a time in history when parents, even in the midst of disasters and despair, did not wish to be delivered of a healthy child? And who wouldn’t want to have a son or daughter who was as smart as Einstein, as athletic as Michael Jordan, and as attractive as … well, name the person whose looks you find most appealing? What could be more natural?

But this deep-seated drive when linked to the onrushing train of genetic medicine is creating a trend that will shape—both literally and figuratively—the future of our species. You haven’t heard of this? It is not surprising. The linkage and its implications have almost no place at the table of the public conversation. Here are just a few examples of what I mean:

Quietly in a laboratory in Vancouver, Robert Holt, head of sequencing for the University of British Columbia’s Genome Science Centre, is working to create the first made to order life form—what is being called “synthetic life”—a microbe.1 Dr. Holt is part of a project led by Craig Venter, former head of Celera Genomics, the private firm that mapped the human genome in 2000. Dr. Venter makes it clear that he and his team have no intention of stopping with microbes. Putting aside for the moment the profound implications of creating a life form from scratch, I mention this principally because, as Dr. Venter says, “We’re going from reading to writing the genetic code.”1

While Holt and Venter are finding out how to write our genetic code, Drs. Elizabeth Fisher at the Institute of Neurology and Victor Tybulewicz at the National Institute for Medical Research in London have perfected a technique for successfully transplanting human chromosomes into mice. It is a breakthrough holding the promise of transforming medical research into the genetic causes of disease. The mice were genetically engineered to carry a copy of human chromosome 21, a string of about 250 genes. About one in a thousand people are born with an extra copy of this chromosome, which causes Down’s syndrome. These genetic studies will help scientists also discern which genes are responsible for a wide range of medical conditions prevalent among people with Down’s syndrome, including impaired brain development, Alzheimer’s disease, heart defects, leukemia, and behavioral abnormalities.

Many have hailed the work, but critics question whether such research does not push the envelope of genetic manipulation too far, blurring the boundaries that define what it means to be biologically human. And this is but one in a wide range of research efforts.

During just the past two years, researchers have created pigs with human blood, fused rabbit eggs with human DNA, and injected human stem cells to make paralyzed mice walk. Quite apart from the implications this research holds for the human species, this intermingling contains another nightmare scenario that some geneticists and medical ethicists have begun to take seriously. What if, by adding human brain cells, a human mind somehow got trapped inside an animal brain? That the Legend of NIMH came to life.

Publication History: Explore: The Journal of Science and Healing
March 2006 (Vol. 2, Issue 2, Pages 106-108)