Toward a Systemic Approach to Disease
Gérald Thurler, Claudine M. Breant, Ben Lehner, Marta C. Bunge, Kamran Samii, Donald L. Hochstrasser, MATHIEU R. NENDAZ, J.-M. Gaspoz, P Tahintzi, FRANÇOIS BORST · Complexus · 2003
The categorization of biological states into healthy and sick, normal and abnormal, is central to medicine. It is therefore of fundamental consequence to know on what this dichotomy is based. A way of approaching this question is to adopt the systemic approach which would make it possible to clear up the concept of disease. The introduced notions are illustrated with a very simple example. Considering the blood system, we have defined an ‘ideal pattern characterizing the iron deficiency anemia. This pattern was tested on a collective of patients composed of all the female patients hospitalized in two medical clinics during the year 2000 at the University Hospital of Geneva.