I have revised "Curing cancer - Adult versus childhood cancer', see https://www.pathologyoutlines.com/.../adultvschildhoodcan.... This brief article compares cancer in adults to cancer in children and adolescents focusing on numbers of deaths, clinical (microscopic) types, survival rates, etiology (how they arise) and curative treatment. Click at https://lp.constantcontactpages.com/su/onz6IND to sign up for our monthly newsletter.
Saturday, April 30, 2022
Tuesday, April 12, 2022
12 April 2022: Curing cancer - reductionism versus complexity
I have updated my article: Curing cancer - Reductionism versus complexity. It begins:
In 1971, President Richard M. Nixon announced the beginning of the "war
on cancer" in the United States. Fifty years later, despite massive
government expenditures and testimonials that the war on cancer "did
everything it was supposed to do", cancer is still a leading cause of
death with high mortality from cancer of the lung, colon, pancreas and
breast.
Our war on cancer has failed because our basic approach
to biology is wrong. Biologic thinking has traditionally relied on
reductionism, the theory that the behavior of the whole is equal to the
sum of the behavior of the parts. Based on this theory, sophisticated
systems are presumed to be combinations of simpler systems that can be
reduced to simpler parts; this implies that disease is due to flawed
parts and treatment merely needs to identify and repair or destroy the
damaged parts. Although logical and rational, reductionism does not
accurately describe the functioning of complex systems, including human
biology.
Rest of article, https://www.pathologyoutlines.com/ccnblog/reductionismvscomplexity.html