Toe Bone Connected to the Foot Bone ...
In May of 2006 PLOS One published an excellent paper summarizing the evidence that the reductionist approach embraced by medicine over the last century or so had done about as much as it could and was actually hindering further advances. You can find a free copy of that paper, "The Limits of Reductionism in Medicine: Could Systems Biology Offer An Alternative?" at PLOS One.
Modern medicine, the authors wrote, tends to assume (a) that each disease has a single cause; (b) that any deviation from homeostasis requires beating down levels of whatever is up and pumping up levels of whatever is down; (c) that a risk factor for disease in one person is a risk factor for disease in another person; and, (d) that in the case of multiple disease states they can each be treated separately rather than cumulatively. While this approach has been quite successful, particularly for certain diseases, the view of the body and its functions as a bunch of disconnected parts to be dealt with by hyperspecialized parts doctors is beginning to give way to a view that a deeper understanding of disease will occur only when when the complex systems governing the whole organism are understood.
Now there's another paper advancing this idea that afflictions of the body are more than just the sum of their signs and symptoms. In "Systems Biology as a Paradigm Shift in Clinical Research" available free at Oxford Journal of Nephrology Dialysis Transplantation. In particular the authors note the failed promise of biomarker identification to uncover either the causes of illness or effective treatments.
"Simply stated, molecules in a living cell are involved in networks of interactions that regulate the cell's basic functions ... [d]isruption of a partner in these interactions does not result in linear and definable effects but rather in global and often unpredicted perturbations of the whole network." The authors conclude with an overview of the systems biology approach and its promise particularly with regard to understanding and treating chronic diseases.
