The other day, I came across this article in the NY Times regarding cancer. Actually, I’ve been reading articles about cancer every since 1975 or so. There have been all sorts of promising leads reported in the Times over the years regarding this terrible disease. But they never turn out to be the “magic bullet” that can stop cancer, or even make it a manageable (if unpleasant) chronic condition like diabetes. There’s still something about cancer that the doctors aren’t seeing.

Medicine has had it’s best success against conditions that have one clearly identifiable cause, like a specific germ or toxin that the body is exposed to. The doctors also do OK when one particular body part is broken and can be fixed with a knife (or laser, now) and some thread. Or when a pipe in the body gets clogged and needs to be cleaned out. Doctors are at their best in those instances. They have built their institutions and procedures around these kinds of situations. This is the way that doctors think; i.e., there’s one cause, and once I identify it, I will prescribe a treatment. Next case. Admittedly, doctors have saved a lot of lives and made a lot of peoples’ lives less miserable doing this.

Unfortunately, their “one main factor” approach seems to have its limits. One small but common example is backache. Fortunately, I don’t have back problems. But those who do tell me that it’s a lifetime thing, and that doctors seem kind-of lost in dealing with it (even though they bravely pretend that they know just what is happening and what should be done). Backache is a complex, systemic condition involving a lot of dynamic interactions between body, mind and environment. And doctors don’t understand complex dynamic system interactions all that well. They don’t like chaotic processes. They were taught that the body has plenty of complex things going on inside it, but that those things happen in a deterministic fashion. They weren’t prepared for chaos and complexity.

Fortunately, over the past 20 years, a variety of mathematicians, computer experts and other eclectic scientists have put much time into studying the nature of chaos and complexity itself. And they are now coming up with some really interesting insights on how complex, highly interdependent systems operate. These insights apply across a wide range of phenomenon – the stock market, the weather, the banking system, the highway network, ant colonies, galaxies – and yes, the human body. Most scientific and social service fields are now starting to welcome the insights that this new area of study can provide. I suspect that medicine is having a hard time with it, however.

But from the looks of this article, some medical types are [FINALLY] starting to think about cancer in a systemic fashion. They are finally starting to look at the body and what happens to it in a broader sense, including the germs it gets exposed to, the injuries and shocks it sustains, the food and liquids that it takes in, and even (maybe) the psychological stuff that it experiences. They are finally starting to think about the genesis and development of cancer in terms of the complex interactions between all of these things, along with the body’s plumbing and cells and chemistry.

This article does not mention chaos theory or complexity and emergence by name. But it’s right on the verge. It’s the next logical step. I’m thus a bit more hopeful that medical people will learn to start thinking outside of their very boxy mental boxes. Just getting a grasp on the immune system itself will take a lot of computer modeling and complex system oversight. And cancer isn’t going down if we don’t get a grasp on the immune system.

It’s still going to be a long journey, and I’m no longer hopeful that medicine will come to control cancer in my lifetime. BUT, perhaps they finally are getting on the right track, even though it requires a bit of humility within an institution that isn’t famous for that. Perhaps doctors and medical researchers are finally admitting that they need help, that they need a new way of looking at things like cancer.

If that turns out to be the case, then perhaps there is some reason for real hope as we once again turn the calendar and start another new year. Have a happy!