ArticlePhilosophy, ethics, and humanities in medicine : PEHM2014
The specificity triad: notions of disease and therapeutic specificity in biomedical reasoning.
Article in Philosophy, ethics, and humanities in medicine : PEHM, 2014. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 4 papers.
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Who cites it
4 citing papers in PubMed.
- A Computational Approach to Identify Novel Protein Targets Uncovers New Potential Mechanisms of Action of Mirtazapine S(+) and R(-) Enantiomers in Rett Syndrome.Journal of neurochemistry · 2025Article
- Historical ethnobotanical review of medicinal plants used to treat children diseases in Romania (1860s-1970s).Journal of ethnobiology and ethnomedicine · 2020Review
- Perspectives on "Disease" and "Disability" in Child Health: The Case of Childhood Neurodisability.Frontiers in public health · 2016Review
- Synthetic biology for pharmaceutical drug discovery.Drug design, development and therapy · 2015Review
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Authors and funding
1 author.
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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.
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