I was driving to my office, listening to Morning Edition on NPR (National Public Radio). Commentator David Ewing Duncan was talking about the implications of his experience as the first human to have his DNA extensively screened for genetic disorders. He hopes this information will enable him to fend off diseases that the tests indicated he is predisposed toward.

The subject interests me because for nearly 40 years I've been devoting my life to eliminating disease and suffering. I appreciate the efforts of researchers to get to the genesis of disease in the hope of finding effective ways to prevent and cure it.

Since the focus of my career as a Christian Science practitioner has been on the prevention and cure of disease through spiritual causation and power, I found myself asking some questions: "What are genetic researchers actually looking at? Is DNA cause or effect? Could it actually be the effect of human misperceptions? If it is effect, is DNA itself subject to change through spiritual power?"

What first ignited my interest in the preventive and therapeutic power of spiritual causation was an unexpected healing of lumps in one of my breasts. It happened, instantly, while I was studying Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, by Mary Baker Eddy.

It didn't occur to me, when I first started to read Science and Health, that what I would learn could result in physical healing. My quest was to gain some understanding of God, and of my relation to Him. To that end, it really held my attention. It made me think. I studied it every night that summer—thinking through its ideas, coming to reasoned conclusions regarding their truth.

One night as I studied, the book's proposition that Spirit, not matter, is the only creator suddenly made complete sense to me. There isn't space here fully to explain what became clear to me. (I'll leave that task to the book itself as it relates to each individual.) What matters is this: That night there was a major shift in my perceptions of cause and effect. I understood Spirit (as opposed to matter) to be primal cause, myself to be spiritual (the reflection of Spirit, of God), and those lumps in my breast to have no creator.

The lumps were gone when I woke up the next morning.

At the time, I could not explain how that shift in my thinking—from a material concept of cause, to an understanding of Spirit as the one and only real cause—had healed me. I just knew that it had. Forty-eight years of continual daily study and practice of the spiritual ideas in Science and Health, however—which have been accompanied by consistent, practical results in my life—have explained the "how" to me.

What's now clear to me is that the cause of any disease cannot be found in matter. If disease has any cause at all, it is in human misperceptions of God and His creation. What I've seen over and over again is that when the power of spiritual understanding corrects a person's material misconceptions, the disease in question diminishes, or disappears, even when the disease is considered hereditary. This passage in Science and Health explains what I've found to be true: "Consciousness constructs a better body when faith in matter has been conquered. Correct material belief by spiritual understanding, and Spirit will form you anew" (p. 425).

These experiences lead me to believe that DNA is actually effect, not cause, and that it is indeed subject to change through spiritual power. I believe that ultimately researchers will exhaust their search for cause in matter. They will look more and more to mental causes. They will come to realize that what they are observing in matter is merely the effect of human misconceptions. Eventually they will look to Spirit as the great and only cause. In Spirit and spiritual ideas they will find health, instead of disease. Then, their ability to prevent and cure disease will be truly remarkable.

The really remarkable thing is that individuals can conduct this kind of spiritual research in their own lives today, and reap its practical benefits. And I can tell you, it's a great—and healthy—way to live!