īiography Early life and education Ĭhopra was born in New Delhi, British India to Krishan Lal Chopra (1919–2001) and Pushpa Chopra. Chopra's treatments generally elicit nothing but a placebo response and have drawn criticism that the unwarranted claims made for them may raise "false hope" and lure sick people away from legitimate medical treatments. Evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins has said that Chopra uses "quantum jargon as plausible-sounding hocus pocus". This has led physicists to object to his use of the term "quantum" in reference to medical conditions and the human body. Chopra says that what he calls " quantum healing" cures any manner of ailments, including cancer, through effects that he claims are literally based on the same principles as quantum mechanics. Philosopher Robert Carroll writes that Chopra, to justify his teachings, attempts to integrate Ayurveda with quantum mechanics. The criticism has been described as ranging "from the dismissive to.damning". The ideas Chopra promotes have regularly been criticized by medical and scientific professionals as pseudoscience. He claims that his practices can also treat chronic disease. Seeing the human body as undergirded by a "quantum mechanical body" composed not of matter but of energy and information, he believes that "human aging is fluid and changeable it can speed up, slow down, stop for a time, and even reverse itself," as determined by one's state of mind.
Ĭhopra believes that a person may attain "perfect health", a condition "that is free from disease, that never feels pain", and "that cannot age or die". In 1996, he co-founded the Chopra Center for Wellbeing. He then left the TM movement to become the executive director of Sharp HealthCare's Center for Mind-Body Medicine. In 1993, Chopra gained a following after he was interviewed about his books on The Oprah Winfrey Show. Shortly thereafter he resigned his position at NEMH to establish the Maharishi Ayurveda Health Center. In 1985, he met Maharishi Mahesh Yogi and became involved in the Transcendental Meditation (TM) movement. As a licensed physician, in 1980 he became chief of staff at the New England Memorial Hospital (NEMH). Ĭhopra studied medicine in India before emigrating in 1970 to the United States, where he completed a residency in internal medicine and a fellowship in endocrinology. His discussions of quantum healing have been characterised as technobabble – "incoherent babbling strewn with scientific terms" which drives those who actually understand physics "crazy" and as "redefining Wrong". A prominent figure in the New Age movement, his books and videos have made him one of the best-known and wealthiest figures in alternative medicine. Deepak Chopra ( / ˈ d iː p ɑː k ˈ tʃ oʊ p r ə/ Hindi: born October 22, 1946) is an Indian-American author and alternative medicine advocate.