The specificity triad: notions of disease and therapeutic specificity in biomedical reasoning

Philosophy, Ethics, and Humanities in Medicine

Shai Mulinari¹ 

[1] Department of Sociology, Faculty of Social Sciences, Lund University, Box 114, Lund, 221 00, Sweden

关键词: Neuroscience;    Psychiatry;    Developmental biology;    Regenerative medicine;    Fleck;    Biomedicine;    Style of thought;    Specificity;   

Others  :  1132051
DOI  :  10.1186/1747-5341-9-14

 received in 2014-04-01, accepted in 2014-10-13,  发布年份 2014

【 摘 要 】

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.

【 授权许可】

   
2014 Mulinari; licensee BioMed Central Ltd.

【 图 表 】

Figure 1.

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