Does new physics lurk inside living matter?

There seems to be a belief among a small percentage of otherwise non-magical-thinking scientists that life or intelligence requires some extra ingredient that isn't covered by chemistry or physics in general.

They assert that no machine can ever be truly self aware or try to draw a fundamental (quantum) distinction between inanimate and "living" matter, or assert that probabilities don't collapse into a single reality until a HUMAN looks at them.

To paraphrase Charles Babbage, "I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a [notion]."