Posted: Jun 16, 2010 9:56 pm
GenesForLife wrote:if there is no obvious underlying physical pathology, investigations must continue until it is rendered obvious, which is why medical science and biology in general has not come to a standstill, but then again, "obvious" is a term that is very much grounded in the inadequacies of our current diagnostic and analytical tools to pinpoint it.
Now, you argue it is unobtainable, care to back that up with evidence?
The trouble is, those investigations might continue a while - possibly years, decades or even centuries. All sorts of treatment currently goes on for conditions for which the physical pathology doesn't correspond well to symptoms, and for where no physical pathology is known. E.g. fybromyalgia, migraine, and a lot of psychiatric disorders - I'm sure Shrunk could explain this better than me though. You have a lot of faith that it's just a small matter of time and technology, which many don't share.
(What's unobtainable would be a 1:1 mapping of symptoms to disease - I'm talking about uncommon as well as common symptoms. Despite even the best efforts of the materia medica, that would be too unwieldy.)