- Email: [email protected]
New Center for Education and Research in Consciousness
Author's Accepted Manuscript
News Bonnie Horrigan
PII: DOI: Reference:
S1550-8307(16)00040-9 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.explore.2016.02.010 JSCH2093
To appear in:
Explore
www.elsevier.de/endend
Cite this article as: Bonnie Horrigan, News, Explore, http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j. explore.2016.02.010 This is a PDF file of an unedited manuscript that has been accepted for publication. As a service to our customers we are providing this early version of the manuscript. The manuscript will undergo copyediting, typesetting, and review of the resulting galley proof before it is published in its final citable form. Please note that during the production process errors may be discovered which could affect the content, and all legal disclaimers that apply to the journal pertain.
News Bonnie Horrigan Dr. New Center for Education and Research in Consciousness The University of Washington Bothell is launching a Minor in Consciousness, the first minor of its kind at an American public university. The new Center offers students and faculty the opportunity to explore the big questions and mysteries that have captured the attention of scientists, scholars, philosophers and creative minds throughout the centuries. Students enrolled in the minor engage in study of the nature, dynamics, and functions of the mind. Content about the ontology of mind is informed by depth psychology, neuroscience, quantum physics, and the contemplative practices. Studies will include the nature of consciousness, the intersection of mind and matter, and ways of exploring levels of awareness that span disciplines, cultures, and history. Students will also learn a variety of experiential practices that have been demonstrated to heighten mental clarity, enhance creativity, and promote psychological and physical wellbeing. The minor is spearheaded by Kathleen Nobel, PhD, a licensed clinical and counseling psychologist with more than 20 years of practice focusing on the development of resilience and psychospiritual wellbeing. Nobel is the author of Riding the Windhorse: Spiritual Development and the Growth of Self and has been a UW
faculty member since 1990. Course faculty members note that, “Human understanding of consciousness is undergoing a rapid and unprecedented shift in scientific attention. The increasing sophistication of brain imaging technologies, advances in resuscitation science, new collaborations between scientists and practitioners of contemplative traditions, and the conceptual power of quantum physics offer a breathtaking new paradigm of reality that is Copernican in its scope and implications. Unlike the materialist paradigm that has dominated the philosophy and practice of Western science for the past 400 years, this new paradigm asserts consciousness to be the primary force in an ever expanding multiverse, one that makes possible our experience of physical reality and so much more.”
Leadership Newsletter Now Available A new e-newsletter focused on integrative leadership is now available from the Leadership Program in Integrative Healthcare at Duke. Published quarterly and distributed for free, it covers leadership from an integrative healthcare perspective
as well as from the point of view of mindfulness meditation. If you like to receive the newsletter please email Bonnie Horrigan at [email protected]. To read the previous issues, please visit: www.dukeintegrativemedicine.org/category/leadership-programnewsletter/newsletter/. FDA Strengthens Dietary Supplement Regulation As part of an effort to better regulate the growing supplement industry, the FDA recently announced the creation of its Office of Dietary Supplement Programs (ODSP). The program was initially a division under the agency’s Office of Nutrition Labeling and Dietary Supplements, which has been renamed the Office of Nutrition and Food Labeling. The new office’s responsibilities will include: • Taking action to remove dangerous supplement products from the market. • Working with the FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research to help remove products falsely labeled as dietary supplements from the market. • Enforcing the dietary supplement good manufacturing practices (GMP) regulation, with priority given to cases in which GMP violations potentially compromise product safety, fail to ensure product identity, or result in consumer deception. • Taking action against claims in cases involving serious risk of consumer harm or widespread economic fraud. The elevation of the ODSP will raise the profile of dietary supplements within the FDA and enable a greater number of government resources to be allocated to the effective regulation of these products, according to an FDA press release. In the last 20 years, the industry has grown from about $6 billion to more than $35 billion in annual sales. The FDA is in the process of identifying permanent leadership for ODSP. In the meantime, Bob Durkin will serve as the Acting Office Director of the ODSP and Doug Balentine, PhD, has been tasked with leading the Office of Nutrition and Food Labeling. NY Times Article Gives the Facts about Our Toxic Environment In a recent article, NY Times Op Ed Columnist Nicholas Kristof laid out some facts about the chemical soup in which we all live. Four of the most frightening facts are:
Scientists have identified more than 200 industrial chemicals — from pesticides, flame retardants, jet fuel and neurotoxins like lead — that can be currently found in the blood of Americans. Lead, mercury, PCBs, flame retardants and pesticides cause prenatal brain damage to tens of thousands of children in this country every year. Lead poisoning is just “the tip of the iceberg.” Flame-retardant chemicals have very similar effects, and they’re in the couches we sit on. One measure of our broken political system is that chemical companies, by spending vast sums on lobbying — $100,000 per member of Congress last year — block serious oversight. Almost none of the chemicals in products we use daily have been tested for safety.
Kristof notes that, “In 1854, a British doctor named John Snow started a revolution. Thousands were dying of cholera at the time, but doctors were resigned to the idea that all they could do was treat sick patients. Then Snow figured out that a water pump on Broad Street in London was the source of the cholera. The water company furiously rejected that conclusion, but Snow blocked use of the water pump, and the cholera outbreak pretty much ended.” Thankfully, Snow’s revelation led to the germ theory and to investments in sanitation and clean water. “Millions of lives were saved,” Kristof says. “Now we need a similar public health revolution focusing on the early roots of many pathologies.”
News Bonnie Horrigan
PII: DOI: Reference:
S1550-8307(16)00040-9 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.explore.2016.02.010 JSCH2093
To appear in:
Explore
www.elsevier.de/endend
Cite this article as: Bonnie Horrigan, News, Explore, http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j. explore.2016.02.010 This is a PDF file of an unedited manuscript that has been accepted for publication. As a service to our customers we are providing this early version of the manuscript. The manuscript will undergo copyediting, typesetting, and review of the resulting galley proof before it is published in its final citable form. Please note that during the production process errors may be discovered which could affect the content, and all legal disclaimers that apply to the journal pertain.
News Bonnie Horrigan Dr. New Center for Education and Research in Consciousness The University of Washington Bothell is launching a Minor in Consciousness, the first minor of its kind at an American public university. The new Center offers students and faculty the opportunity to explore the big questions and mysteries that have captured the attention of scientists, scholars, philosophers and creative minds throughout the centuries. Students enrolled in the minor engage in study of the nature, dynamics, and functions of the mind. Content about the ontology of mind is informed by depth psychology, neuroscience, quantum physics, and the contemplative practices. Studies will include the nature of consciousness, the intersection of mind and matter, and ways of exploring levels of awareness that span disciplines, cultures, and history. Students will also learn a variety of experiential practices that have been demonstrated to heighten mental clarity, enhance creativity, and promote psychological and physical wellbeing. The minor is spearheaded by Kathleen Nobel, PhD, a licensed clinical and counseling psychologist with more than 20 years of practice focusing on the development of resilience and psychospiritual wellbeing. Nobel is the author of Riding the Windhorse: Spiritual Development and the Growth of Self and has been a UW
faculty member since 1990. Course faculty members note that, “Human understanding of consciousness is undergoing a rapid and unprecedented shift in scientific attention. The increasing sophistication of brain imaging technologies, advances in resuscitation science, new collaborations between scientists and practitioners of contemplative traditions, and the conceptual power of quantum physics offer a breathtaking new paradigm of reality that is Copernican in its scope and implications. Unlike the materialist paradigm that has dominated the philosophy and practice of Western science for the past 400 years, this new paradigm asserts consciousness to be the primary force in an ever expanding multiverse, one that makes possible our experience of physical reality and so much more.”
Leadership Newsletter Now Available A new e-newsletter focused on integrative leadership is now available from the Leadership Program in Integrative Healthcare at Duke. Published quarterly and distributed for free, it covers leadership from an integrative healthcare perspective
as well as from the point of view of mindfulness meditation. If you like to receive the newsletter please email Bonnie Horrigan at [email protected]. To read the previous issues, please visit: www.dukeintegrativemedicine.org/category/leadership-programnewsletter/newsletter/. FDA Strengthens Dietary Supplement Regulation As part of an effort to better regulate the growing supplement industry, the FDA recently announced the creation of its Office of Dietary Supplement Programs (ODSP). The program was initially a division under the agency’s Office of Nutrition Labeling and Dietary Supplements, which has been renamed the Office of Nutrition and Food Labeling. The new office’s responsibilities will include: • Taking action to remove dangerous supplement products from the market. • Working with the FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research to help remove products falsely labeled as dietary supplements from the market. • Enforcing the dietary supplement good manufacturing practices (GMP) regulation, with priority given to cases in which GMP violations potentially compromise product safety, fail to ensure product identity, or result in consumer deception. • Taking action against claims in cases involving serious risk of consumer harm or widespread economic fraud. The elevation of the ODSP will raise the profile of dietary supplements within the FDA and enable a greater number of government resources to be allocated to the effective regulation of these products, according to an FDA press release. In the last 20 years, the industry has grown from about $6 billion to more than $35 billion in annual sales. The FDA is in the process of identifying permanent leadership for ODSP. In the meantime, Bob Durkin will serve as the Acting Office Director of the ODSP and Doug Balentine, PhD, has been tasked with leading the Office of Nutrition and Food Labeling. NY Times Article Gives the Facts about Our Toxic Environment In a recent article, NY Times Op Ed Columnist Nicholas Kristof laid out some facts about the chemical soup in which we all live. Four of the most frightening facts are:
Scientists have identified more than 200 industrial chemicals — from pesticides, flame retardants, jet fuel and neurotoxins like lead — that can be currently found in the blood of Americans. Lead, mercury, PCBs, flame retardants and pesticides cause prenatal brain damage to tens of thousands of children in this country every year. Lead poisoning is just “the tip of the iceberg.” Flame-retardant chemicals have very similar effects, and they’re in the couches we sit on. One measure of our broken political system is that chemical companies, by spending vast sums on lobbying — $100,000 per member of Congress last year — block serious oversight. Almost none of the chemicals in products we use daily have been tested for safety.
Kristof notes that, “In 1854, a British doctor named John Snow started a revolution. Thousands were dying of cholera at the time, but doctors were resigned to the idea that all they could do was treat sick patients. Then Snow figured out that a water pump on Broad Street in London was the source of the cholera. The water company furiously rejected that conclusion, but Snow blocked use of the water pump, and the cholera outbreak pretty much ended.” Thankfully, Snow’s revelation led to the germ theory and to investments in sanitation and clean water. “Millions of lives were saved,” Kristof says. “Now we need a similar public health revolution focusing on the early roots of many pathologies.”