Ewing GW
The author takes a critical look at modern medicine and of the set of assumption upon which the prevailing biomedical paradigm is based. The many tests which are used to characterize a medical condition are based upon the assumption that a single pathological process can be used as an accurate measure of a pathological process yet it is increasingly recognized that most medical conditions are polygenomic, multi-systemic and multi-pathological. Accordingly, the various drugs which are used to treat a medical condition and which are based upon the often erroneous assumption that the suppression or masking of a single pathological process in order to treat the symptoms of dysfunction fails to take into account that the complex mechanism by which the brain regulates the autonomic nervous system and hence that treating the symptoms of a pathology with a drug often does little to influence the fundamental cause of the condition with the consequence that further pathologies emerge in due course. Here we quote Brenner “Some people have suggested that we can change the genome to fit this new environment”. But that is blatantly ridiculous at this time. Another solution is to patch up the phenotype which is what modern medicine is all about. But the real alternative is to come to grips with the environment and adjust it wherever we can to cope with health problems that arise from maladaptation.
