Abstract
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.
Highlights
Biomedicine is typically defined as the branch of medicine based on the principles of biology and biochemistry
The specificity triad refers to a framework in the style of thought of biomedicine created by stylistic bonds, or links, between therapeutics, disorders and pathological mechanisms that, I shall argue, underpin biomedical reasoning (Figure 1)
This article has developed a frame that may allow for a fruitful analysis of how notions of disease and therapeutic specificity guide biomedical reasoning
Summary
Echoing Pourquié, the review crafts semiotic links by means of the rhetorical act of making future-orientated claims about regenerative medicine, stating for example that DiPSCs “may one day provide a source of patient-specific replacement cells for β-cells lost to diabetes...” (p.778) This latter point is vital because such hopes are currently informing a major collective biomedical research effort concerned with how these cells can be mobilized to permanently regenerate damaged tissue without injuring the human recipient. Such statements expose the ambiguous epistemic status of psychiatry in contemporary medicine This ambiguity, I contend, is testimony to the incongruity between, on the one hand, the style of thought of biomedicine that underpins biological research in psychiatry and, on the other hand, the long-standing nebulous nature of the links between specific disorders, pathologies, and therapeutics in psychiatry
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