Courage and Community Speech

Speech deliveried by Dr. Barbara Brewitt
University of Washington’s Evening with Industry
Society of Women Engineers
January 21, 2004

How many of you by a show of hands would like to contribute something to society through your vocation?

Anais Nin said “Life expands and contracts in proportion to our courage”
Thich Nhat Hahn says “To be is to be an Inter-being”

These are the themes I want to speak to you about this evening ‘Courage and Community’

Perhaps, each of us entered science to make a contribution, I certainly did. The skills we develop in the privileged scientific community enable us to see the cutting edge, to innovate, to contribute. Some scientists use their skills to contribute to a growing common science reserve; others touch upon an observation that is perceived by the scientist as novel, as precious.

Hmmm…this is where courage begins; to see the importance of an observation and take a path not traveled before and meeting support and resistance along the way.

The more significant the finding, the greater the resistance one might encounter.

This is where the paths of inter-being and courage cross. No one likes to meet up with and feel the pressure of resistance. The greater the resistance the more a single individual, a scientist, begins to question him or herself.

The more novel the observation, the fewer the people who have seen it or valued it before you have. And yet, as scientists, isn’t this what our training and discipline are all about, to see what other’s have never seen before?

So, it comes down to you. How much are you willing to stand in your own truth to offer your contribution to the community?

Most of us run into fear when the stakes are high. The more resistance we experience, the more we doubt our self our contribution, the value of our observation or innovation. That is the very reason that progress is slow. Most of us choose the easy path, the road frequently traveled and well marked to guide you so you don’t feel lost.

When we, as scientists, make a breakthrough finding we come to a cross-road: Give it up and eliminate the critics and the resistance or stand firm in the significance of the finding and chart a new course. That choice will take courage because there are few to no road signs along the way. You are on your own...or are you?

Thich Nhat Hahn states that “No one is alone – we live in community with people and in relationship to nature and in a society; an ecology that represents the environment we choose to live in.” He states that if you do not touch your fear you can not transform it. And only in the context of our inter-being; in our community membership can we transform the fear to courage.

For example, in one case of my own, I began to observe that cells talk to each other. They use signaling molecules, called growth factors to do it. This seemed obvious enough in my community of molecular biologists in basic science.

I saw the potential significance to the general population; could I innovate a way for people to access cell signaling for their health? This thinking ran contrary to the thinking of both pharmaceutical companies and the accepted traditions of natural medicine. At the same time the notion that people could tap their inner power and normal processes of cell-to-cell communication incorporated well accepted principles of each paradigm. This is where the disruption began.

Instead of appearing as a total heretic, there was some disturbing truth that the gate keepers in the both camps could neither reject nor readily accept.

Somewhere, in the innovation of cell signaling was a marriage of the two camps. On the one hand was DNA biotechnology and growth factor molecular biology. On the other hand were the truths of “less is more” and “the body’s natural intelligence to heal itself” without toxic side effects.

The gate keepers kept me at bay – as one grant after another was turned down or highly acclaimed but never rewarded. My fear increased with the severity of the criticism and the failed attempts to get mainstream institutional support.

However my courage became resolute as a community of people searching for the innovation continually pulled me through via words of support, common networking to each other, testaments to the significance of the innovation in their personal world and their willingness to build bridges to institutions and the medical community, stating that change was needed and this was an innovation whose time had come.

Fundamentally, it was the many small communities of health care advocates at a variety of levels of influence that have kept me going. It this INTER-BEINGNESS that has soothed my soul and fired my heart and mind to persevere.

Allow me to please share with you the first time I saw the ‘dark night of my soul’ before me and that I became aware of the forces I was up against and that I faced my aloneness. The opportunity to choose fear or find courage was upon me, without my asking.

It was 1996. I had received the #1 rating from a competitive NIH grant regarding complementary and alternative approaches with HIV. I had proposed with preliminary data that homeopathic insulin-like growth factor-1 might treat HIV wasting disease.

The FDA blocked the delivery of grant funds. They had spoken to the homeopathic gate keepers, the Homeopathic Pharmacopoeia Convention of the United States, who subsequently rejected the principal of the grant because they were not familiar with the term ‘recombinant’. Recombinant DNA biotechnology is a process by which scientists learned to grow a signaling protein using sugars, phosphates and proteins that only the body had previously known how to make.

It was that moment that I felt my aloneness. My heart and mind knew that this innovation of homeopathic recombinant IGF-1 could save lives, could prevent needless suffering, fear and anxiety. At least, I felt people had the right to find out through a credible double-blind, placebo controlled clinical study.

My associates and I already had positive results from two other clinical studies and we have presented them at International AIDS conferences where they were well received. I just wanted to pursue the possible significance of these findings.

I was SHOCKED that conventional institutions with the scientific and natural health business communities were actively blocking this new idea. Hmmmmm...what to do ?

I had a choice then, GIVE UP — that was Door "A" Or see another way – create Door "B". there always is a door "B", but you have to create it.

I strongly felt the lives of people in the lurch – these people had what was called at that time ‘The Look’. These people were wasting and losing lean body mass – you can only lose so much lean mass...then you just die. These were the people I either knew or had been introduced to. I was receiving letters, emails and calls; a mother in Italy, families in Australia, partners of people in Canada and a whole network of activists throughout the United States. “Please, they said, please help, can’t you do something?”

So, in this inter-being, I took the only steps I had available to me with the tools that I carried to pull me along.

I initiated a completely new clinical study on homeopathic recombinant IGF-1 for the homeopathic community. I also wrote an entire dissertation to the FDA documenting and educating them on why growth factor signaling molecules and especially IGF-1 was homeopathic in the most classical terms.

This took time, money and political conversations. Well, I haven’t received that grant money yet! However, these efforts did earn me respect and an entry way to the world of over-the-counter sales of homeopathic recombinant human growth hormone.

You see, the same FDA gate keeper who blocked the NIH funding at the FDA also oversaw pharmaceutical sales of rhgH by injection and the non-traditional drug sales of homeopathic medicines. He had read thoroughly my Door "B" dissertation on homeopathic growth factors and stated in 1999 in an official memorandum that for the time homeopathy had entered the present medical mindset and medical field. In fact, he said – so much so, that this thinking had ramifications for the pharmaceutical industry beyond my knowledge, which is why he would not act in a favorable way for delivery of grant funds.

However, while he was not willing to authorize release of funds, he did give me an indirect green light to sell our clinically proven and patented homeopathic recombinant human growth hormone. Not only were we able to sell it in the smaller natural product industry but we were able to sell it into the mass markets. This has opened the floodgates for me and the company I founded, Biomed Comm, Inc. We also sell homeopathic recombinant IGF-1…and there is no controversy on that concept anymore.

Door "B" has been the solution. It is the fundamental truth of embracing fear and standing in the conviction of an innovation that has brought me here today. Thich would say “That to be happy and healthy is to offer health and happiness to others”. As a scientist, I was given some gifts and tools. Only by facing my fear, embracing my courage and accepting the responsibility of my Inter-Beingness, have I been able to move forward. Life and my contributions continue to expand, this is encouraging.

My hope is that as you make your contributions you too will find your courage. Each of you has your own unique understandings and perceptions, these will become more apparent to you as you continue your work. Listen to yourself, have confidence in yourself and find your community, your source of Inter-being. This will guide you.

Thank you for your attention and interest.