Re: Introduction

[Judith Rosen <***>]

Hello Tom!

Yes, I remember the paper you mentioned. I even have a copy somewhere around here. It had such a catchy title ("Biology's Einstein") that it stayed in my memory. It also impressed me because you are an MD and you found my father's work on your own. I had long thought-- and still do-- that the field of medicine is one in which humanity stands to benefit MOST in the shortest amount of time from the sort of paradigm shift that my father was developing. I also believe that medicine is the one field whereby the fundamental concepts can quickly be proven true, with obvious feedback and documentation, which will lay a foundation of evidence that a broader paradigm of this sort for science in general is really mandated by the nature of complex systems in a complex universe. Medical science isn't some obscure area of human curiosity, like nuclear astrophysics... every single person has a vested interest in supporting and/or contributing to advances in the field of medicine! We've all experienced the business end of the needle.

When you were reading through the archives, did you happen to find the post I wrote on Robert Rosen's "Immunological Shadow Theory"? I think there are a good number of clues to some persistent medical (human physiological) mysteries in those ideas, as well as potential applications to be developed. If you didn't see it, I'll post it again. I'd like your input on it, frankly.

The only other MD I know who is actively using my father's work is Dr. Vadim Kvitash, an immunologist in San Francisco who has developed an information sorting protocol which analyzes the 12 most common blood chemistry test values and can diagnose a whole slew of diseases, accurately, even while they are in the sub-clinical phase (in other words, there are no symptoms, yet; the 12 values in one's blood work results can all still be "within normal ranges"). He does this by mapping the patterns between these values and comparing those patterns to known disease state value relation patterns. He found that those patterns "commute" and they are reliable. Each of the diseases he's been able to correlate to a pattern has, when diagnosed in sub-clinical phase in a patient with his pattern-sorter, later been clinically proven to exist. Some of the pre-clinical pathologies he can diagnose in pre-clinical stages are insulin resistance (incipient diabetes), liver cirrhosis, several types of hepatitis, several cancers, depression (he can even identify which type it is; whether it will respond to medication or not) and Alzheimers. He may have identified more patterns by now-- my information is over a year old. Anyway-- what blows my mind is that Vadim has had a hell of a time getting funding to further develop his technology! He's put everything he's got into it, and it's very slow going without funding. I took it to the large teaching hospital here in Rochester and suggested they get involved. They investigated it... you know what they said? "There isn't enough independent verification. Almost all of the studies done have been his own." Talk about lack of vision! FRUSTRATION.

Anyway, I  would very much like to help develop any applications you can come up with, so count me in. And welcome to the list!

Judith
Web address: http://www.rosen-enterprises.com
BioTheory: An electronic journal of general science based on the Relational (Rosennean) Complexity Paradigm
On Oct 14, 2005, at 9:23 PM, Tom Staiger wrote:

> <x-tad-smaller>Greetings,</x-tad-smaller>
>  
> <x-tad-smaller>I just signed up for the group and thought I should take an opportunity introduce myself. I am a general internist and an associate professor of medicine at the University of Washington.  I came across Life Itself in the process of searching for a better foundation for a medical model than mechanistic biology seemed to offer.  In the early 90's I wrote a piece called "Biologies Einstein?" about Life Itself and RR which he seemed to like and which I believe he may have shared with Judith.  Perspectives in Biology and Medicine turned it down, though I've been thinking of late of revising and resubmitting it somewhere. I published 2 pieces on Rosen's work in Advances (a journal of Mind-Body health) in the mid-late 90's. One discussed the similarities between the relational model of an organism and Gregory Bateson's concept of mental processes.  The other tried (not very successfully) to explain the differences between semantic and syntactic information.  I became a clinician-administrator in our medical center 4 years ago, which has cut into my scholarly pursuits, but am working on reclaiming more time for academic work.</x-tad-smaller>
>  
> <x-tad-smaller>Off an on for the last 14 years I've been thinking about ways  that the ideas in Life Itself and Anticipatory Systems could be used to solve (or at least illuminate) problems in healthcare, so I found past posts from Judith and others regarding a Rosennean Modelling Project of interest. </x-tad-smaller>
>  
> <x-tad-smaller>One outcome of this ruminating was the thought of designing a clinical instrument  that would illustrate anticipatory systems in medicine. The best I've been able to come up with so far is the idea that disagreements between patients and physicians (or between the patient's model/representation and the physician's model/representation) regarding what they think is going on or is going to happen to the patient could have some characteristics of an anticipatory system. My thought is along the lines that recognizing and acting on disagreement could influence future events, such as decreasing the likelihood of a diagnosis being missed or increasing the chances of patient following a treatment plan. (I recognize this isn't a perfect description of an anticipatory system and hope that more accurate depictions of a practical anticipatory system could be designed.) In any case I was eventually able to design and test an "agreement instrument" with such a purpose in mind.  A paper describing these findings (which doesn't contain any references to anticipatory systems) has just been published in the Journal of General Internal Medicine. For those interested it is at</x-tad-smaller>
>  
> <x-tad-smaller>http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1525-1497.2005.0175.x</x-tad-smaller>
>  
> <x-tad-smaller>As a next step in this project I'm preparing a small grant proposal to test this instrument in a primary care and and ER setting to see if agreement predicts patients intention to adhere to treatment recommendations, resolution of symptoms, and/or patient satisfaction.   If this works, I would envision trying to teach clinicians to better recognize disagreements with their patients and trying to show that better recognition of such situations could improve certain future outcomes.  Another of my goals is to translate some of the ideas from Life Itself into a relational model of medicine, but having spend a couple years off an on working on such a project, I'm painfully aware of the challenges of translating RR's concepts for the uninitiated.</x-tad-smaller>
>  
> <x-tad-smaller>Thanks to T. Gwinn and to Judith for developing and maintaining this discussion.  I look forward to trading ideas with all of you. Best wishes,</x-tad-smaller>
>  
> <x-tad-smaller>Tom</x-tad-smaller>
>  
>