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Crossing the Styx: If Precision Medicine Were to Become Exact Science

Strand, Roger and Chu, Dominique (2022) Crossing the Styx: If Precision Medicine Were to Become Exact Science. In: Bremer, Anne and Strand, Roger, eds. Precision Oncology and Cancer Biomarkers: Issues at Stake and Matters of Concern. Human Perspectives in Health Sciences and Technology . Springer, pp. 133-154. ISBN 978-3-030-92611-3. E-ISBN 978-3-030-92612-0. (doi:10.1007/978-3-030-92612-0_9) (The full text of this publication is not currently available from this repository. You may be able to access a copy if URLs are provided) (KAR id:94129)

The full text of this publication is not currently available from this repository. You may be able to access a copy if URLs are provided. (Contact us about this Publication)
Official URL:
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-92612-0_9

Abstract

The term “precision medicine” is used to denote existing practices as well as how medical research and practice are imagined to become in the future. One important element of the imaginaries of precision medicine is the development of systems biology and computational models with the promise of numerical precision and conceptual rigour. If precision medicine were to become an exact science that relies on computational models, it might increase precision in diagnosis and treatment, specifying the right drug to the right patient at the right time. It should be noted, though, that computational models require explicit specification of the properties and boundaries of the system to be modelled, whereas cells, tissues and patients are predominantly open systems in their natural state. Accordingly, such models risk being precisely wrong instead of approximately right. Right and wrong, however, are value judgements that depend upon the aims and scope of the scientific and medical enterprise. In order for medicine to become an exact science, cells, tissues and patients would have to be reconceived and/or reconfigured as relatively closed systems with relatively deterministic behaviour. The realization of precision medicine as an exact science may thus be accompanied by a transition from a world of complex natural life to a world of reduced life or a simple delay of death; a transition to be likened with the crossing of the Styx.

Item Type: Book section
DOI/Identification number: 10.1007/978-3-030-92612-0_9
Subjects: R Medicine
Divisions: Divisions > Division of Computing, Engineering and Mathematical Sciences > School of Computing
Depositing User: Dominique Chu
Date Deposited: 24 Apr 2022 11:07 UTC
Last Modified: 18 Mar 2024 14:31 UTC
Resource URI: https://kar.kent.ac.uk/id/eprint/94129 (The current URI for this page, for reference purposes)

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