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Judith, I had previously scanned the
Immunologic Shadow Theory posts and just reviewed them again. In reading
your initial 4/7/04 post, my impression (albeit from the standpoint of a
physician who is many years removed from his immunology training) would be that
the sketch of the basic theory is consistent with what many immunologists would
accept as process by which pathogens can influence the immune system to promote
autoimmune diseases. I don't know, however, whether anyone in the immunology
community has articulated ideas along these lines in any detail or whether
any of the potential practical applications you list are currently
feasible. If I can find a receptive immunologist at our medical center, I'll forward this
post to them and let you know what I hear.
Thanks for the reference to Dr. Kvitash. I
was able to find some of his papers on-line. There are certainly some
relational aspects to his methods, but I couldn't convince myself that there
would be great practical value to his approach from what I was able to
locate and review. There is a paper of his from the 2002 American Clinical
Laboratory that I couldn't obtain but want to read to see if it contains details
that would be more convincing that the patterns he's found would be sufficiently
sensitive and specific to be useful in detecting clinical or pre-clinical
disease states. If you are aware of any good summaries of his findings, I would
be interested in knowing of them. Best wishes,
Tom
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Saturday, October 15, 2005 6:44
AM
Subject: Re: Introduction
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:
Greetings,
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.
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.
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
http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1525-1497.2005.0175.x
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.
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,
Tom
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