The specificity triad: notions of disease and therapeutic specificity in biomedical reasoning
Författare
Summary, in English
Biomedicine is typically defined as the branch of medicine that is based on the principles of biology and biochemistry. A central tenet for biomedicine is the notion of disease and therapeutic specificity, i.e. the idea of tailored treatments for discrete disorders underpinned by specific pathologies. The present paper is concerned with how notions of disease and therapeutic specificity guide biomedical reasoning. To that end, the author proposes a model - the specificity triad - that draws on late philosopher and physician Ludwik Fleck's concept of "style of thought" to offer a frame for investigating the intricate process through which links between disorders, mechanisms, and therapeutics are established by biomedicine. Next by applying the specificity triad model to scrutinize research efforts in two discrete areas of medicine--psychiatry and regenerative medicine--this paper seeks to stimulate pertinent discussions in and about biomedicine. These include discussions on the ambiguous epistemic status of psychiatry within contemporary biomedicine, as well as the relationship between developmental biology -- historically relatively disjointed from biomedical enterprise -- and the burgeoning field of regenerative medicine.
Publiceringsår
2014
Språk
Engelska
Publikation/Tidskrift/Serie
Philosophy Ethics and Humanities in Medicine
Volym
9
Issue
1
Fulltext
- Available as PDF - 282 kB
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Dokumenttyp
Artikel i tidskrift
Förlag
BioMed Central (BMC)
Ämne
- Clinical Medicine
- Medical Ethics
Nyckelord
- Specificity
- Style of thought
- Biomedicine
- Fleck
- Regenerative medicine
- Developmental biology
- Psychiatry
- Neuroscience
Status
Published
ISBN/ISSN/Övrigt
- ISSN: 1747-5341