You’ve almost certainly inherited genes that suppress tumor formation if they are epigenetically silenced, your anti-cancer defenses are as weak as the starship Enterprise without its deflector shield. Instead, it slaps on a molecular silencer or a molecular turbo-charger, affecting whether they are able to make the protein they spell out and in what quantities. Unlike alterations that change an A to a C, for instance, or a G to a T, or eliminate letters entirely, an epigenetic change leaves the letters alone. Those chemicals, designated A, T, C, and G, code for the proteins that cells make: dopamine receptors, enzymes like telomerase, and everything else required for life. “Epigenetics” refers to changes in DNA that do not alter the four basic chemicals that, strung along the double helix like beads on a necklace, constitute the genetic code.

Let me back up and then return to those rats. Saron is hardly a meditation basher: He co-led a study showing possible epigenetic effects from mindfulness meditation. “The science just isn’t as strong as some people are making it out to be,” said neuroscientist Cliff Saron of the University of California, Davis. Lately, however, studies on the epigenetic effects of meditation have been popping up like dandelions in April, making claims that, unfortunately, rest on shaky science-the shark is well and truly jumped. Many of the findings have solid scientific support. It burst into the scientific mainstream in the last decade or so with fascinating, even paradigm-shifting, discoveries in how genes operate, offering explanations for mysteries from why identical twins differ in the inherited genetic diseases they develop to how our physical environment and social experiences reach into our DNA, altering the blueprints of our lives. Epigenetics is one of those scientific subjects that, after a solid and respectable start, jumped the shark. If it weren’t for the rats, I wouldn’t be writing about epigenetics and meditation.

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