[ 12-14-2010, 01:44 PM: Message edited by: John S ]
Posted by JunkYardWily (Member # 24271) on :
what an awesome article. one of the best ive read. nice find.
Posted by Keebler (Member # 12673) on :
- Thanks for that article. It will take a while to read the whole thing but, as I scrolled down, this insightful section caught my eye: -------------------
What does evolutionary biology have to say about psychosomatic illness?
Personally, I believe that we label an illness as psychosomatic when we don't really know what's going on with the patient. It's a last resort diagnosis - a black box. If we knew more about what was causing their symptoms we could address the issue more clearly.
Looking at psychosomatic illness from an evolutionary viewpoint, you could say that those people who might exaggerate how sick they feel in order to gain attention and resources could have an evolutionary advantage.
But if that's the truth, it only accounts for an extremely small percentage of cases. It's also true that often an illness will have both a psychological and physical component.
But just because a psychological component is identified doesn't mean the physical component should be overlooked. Plus, most mental illnesses are probably the result of infection too.
Chronic Fatigue Syndrome is a good example of a disease that up until recently has been dismissed as psychosomatic just because researchers couldn't figure out the cause. On the contrary, it's quite a serious illness. . . . -
Posted by John S (Member # 19756) on :
I liked the whole article, but this grabbed me:
That's one of the realities of medicine - researchers tend to deny associations. Denial plays a major role as scientists love to hold on to the current dogmatic explanation. This suggests that in order for pathogens to be fully tied to chronic disease we will have to wait until the current powerful people pass away and a sufficient number of young people entering the arena without these vested interests mature into positions of influence, to tip the balance of expert opinion. This is something that Charles Darwin, Max Planck, and Thomas Kuhn all agreed with.
That's because powerful people tend to hang on to the opinions that made them powerful even if there is no longer sufficient evidence to support their views. It's a social problem that relates to the weakness of the mind. Human beings didn't evolve to be scientists. Instead they evolved to be competitive - to grab and hold onto what is theirs. Hence the name calling often observed among the medical community and the resistance among scientists to fund or support ideas other than their own, ideas that question the validity of current dogma.
Posted by RubyJ (Member # 28711) on :