The Biology of Belief - Bruce H. Lipton [11]
CHAPTER 1
LESONS FROM THE PETRI DISH:
In Praise of Smart Cells and Smart Students
On my second day in the Caribbean, as I stood in front of more than a hundred visibly on-edge medical students, I suddenly realized that not everyone viewed the island as a laid-back refuge. For these nervous students, Montserrat was not a peaceful escape but a last-ditch chance to realize their dreams of becoming doctors.
My class was geographically homogeneous, mostly American students from the East Coast, but there were all races and ages, including a sixty-seven-year-old retiree who was anxious to do more with his life. Their backgrounds were equally varied—former elementary school teachers, accountants, musicians, a nun, and even a drug smuggler.
Despite all the differences, the students shared two characteristics: One, they had failed to succeed in the highly competitive selection process that filled the limited number of positions in American medical schools. Two, they were “strivers” intent on becoming doctors—they were not about to be denied the opportunity to prove their qualifications. Most had spent their life savings or indentured themselves to cover the tuition and extra costs of living out of the country. Many found themselves completely alone for the first time in their lives, having left their families, friends, and loved ones behind. They put up with the most intolerable living conditions on that campus. Yet with all the drawbacks and the odds stacked against them, they were never deterred from their quest for a medical degree.
Well, at least that was true up to the time of our first class together. Prior to my arrival, the students had had three different histology/cell biology professors. The first lecturer left the students in the lurch when he responded to some personal issue by bolting from the island three weeks into the semester. In short order, the school found a suitable replacement who tried to pick up the pieces; unfortunately he bailed three weeks later because he got sick. For the preceding two weeks, a faculty member, responsible for another field of study, had been reading chapters out of a textbook to the class. This obviously bored the students to death, but the school was fulfilling a directive to provide a specified number of lecture hours for the course. Academic prerequisites set by American medical examiners have to be met in order for the school’s graduates to practice in the States.
For the fourth time that semester, the weary students listened to a new professor. I briefed them on my background and my expectations for the course. I made it clear that even though we were in a foreign country, I was not going to expect any less from them than what was expected from my Wisconsin students. Nor should they want me to because to be certified all doctors have to pass the same Medical Boards, no matter where they go to medical school. Then I pulled a sheaf of exams out of my briefcase and told the students that I was giving them a self-assessment quiz. The middle of the semester had just passed, and I expected them to be familiar with half of the required course material. The test I handed out on that first day of the course consisted of twenty questions taken directly from the University of Wisconsin histology midterm exam.
The classroom was deadly silent for the first ten minutes of the testing period. Then nervous fidgeting felled the students one by one, faster than the spread of the deadly Ebola virus. By the time the twenty minutes allotted for the quiz were over, wide-eyed panic had gripped the class. When I said, “Stop,” the pent-up nervous anxiety erupted into the din of a hundred excited conversations. I quieted the class down and began to read them the answers. The first five or six answers were met with subdued sighs. After I reached the tenth question, each subsequent answer was followed by agonizing groans. The highest score in the class was ten correct answers,