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Books 155 Interviews and reading suggested to him that, instead of the normal acceptance of objects, people and ideas as individuals, the medium temporarily accepts that all things are related to each other as part of an integral oneness and cannot be considered in isolation. By judicious selection of quotations, LeShan suggests that this lack of individuality is the same as that involved in relativity and field theory in post-Einsteinian physics and that hinted at by certain mystics. As a psychologist, LeShan decided to test his hypothesis of ‘clairvoyant reality’, Rejecting all the repeatable, checkable paranormal phenomena available, he chose instead to try out his hypothesis on faith healing. After 18 month’s introspection, he says he could heal by mental power. He then trained (in three and a half days) others to do the same. Further questioning of faith healers revealed that they had yet another way of regarding reality-this time as what he calls ‘transpsychic reality’, wherein the universe is seen as a whole made up of separate parts, so that knowledge is gained through being a part of this whole and perception of other parts is through the whole. By use of prayer, this ecstatic state can be realised, so that what he calls ‘Type 5’ healing can take place. (‘Type 5’, according to p. 116, is where he failed using the ‘clairvoyant reality’ concept). The main part of the book ends here (p. 165), but five large appendices are included. The analogies drawn between the ‘realities’ of mediums, physicists and mystics may not be entirely convincing as stated here, but this is not to say the underlying concept is necessarily wrong. Certainly, if these different ways of looking at life can work miracles, as LeShan alleges here, he is on the right lines. He states that the techniques are easily learned by most people. It may have been.more convincing if he had chosen some other field than faith healing-surely the hardest paranormal phenomenon to treat scientifically,since every patient (please not ‘hea1ee’especially as not all are helped) is an individual. He did try a similar training technique on clairvoyance. A table on p. 135 gives the results, which are not what he quotes. The nine students appear to have had eight ‘goes’ each, and onpretesting scored four hits to,fivemisses. Posttesting gave five hits to four misses, on average. This is not convincing to me. Not one parapsychologist has taken up the challenge made in Science 182, 202 (1973) to move a Crookes’ radiometer. How about it LeShan? Genetic Fix. Amitai Etzioni. Macmillan, London, 1974. 276 pp. E3.25. Reviewed by James A. Goldman* By ‘fix’, sociologist Etzioni means that scientists can now tamper with our biological inheritance, that is, ‘fix it where it went wrong and improve it’. Consciousness of the Nazis’ attempts at introducing eugenics tempered attitudes, but there is now a ‘growing demand for a genetic elixir, a genetic fix’. Significantly, there are a number of meanings for the word ‘fix’, but, except in one instance (p. 168), Etzioni uses the term to signify ‘repair’. There, in speaking of the means of determining the possible deleterious consequences of the birth control pill, he asks if there exists ‘any other way to get a better f i x [i.e., focus, determination] on how bad the Pill is’ besides subjecting large numbers of women to it, It is here where he clearly states a kind of dilemma that so often arises, namely the ethical acceptability of prescribing ‘the Pill for so many persons before it is safe; but you can never find out whether it is safe unless many take it-and even then, it is rather hard to tell’. Thus, ‘fix’ in its manipulative sense produces a practical predicament and an ethical dilemma. Ironically, at least colloquially, ‘fix’ does signify a dilemma or a predicament. Other meanings of ‘fix’ are ‘to define’, ‘to make firm’ and ‘to make permanent’. These equally apply to the genetic fix and indeed it is these very interconnected aspects that contribute so greatly to the perplexities deriving from man’s intervention into his genetic choices. Etzioni proposes the establishment of local, national and...

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