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This article has its own very naive bias: Thinking that every phenomenon must have a "root cause" - ie, a simple cause-effect explanation - and that if you don'
by danmaz74 13y ago
This article has its own very naive bias: Thinking that every phenomenon must have a "root cause" - ie, a simple cause-effect explanation - and that if you don't find the root cause, you can't control the phenomenon.
Take for example serotonin reuptake inhibitors. It's not important to know if a deficiency in serotonin is the "cause" of depression. All we need to know is if increasing the levels of serotonin correlates with an improvement of the condition of the patient better than placebo.
- tsotha 13y agoFrom a drug designer's perspective, though, this is a problem. If you don't know why the current drugs work you're going to have a lot of trouble improving them.
- danmaz74 13y agoYes, but to know "why" (I'd much rather say "how") current drugs work you don't need to know "why" people get certain illnesses - that's my issue with the article. Their logic is: low serotonin levels aren't the cause of depression - so raising serotonin levels will not eliminate the cause of depression - so doing that isn't useful. That's a naive (and wrong) logic. Your heart going into fibrillation is not the cause of your heart problems, but treating the fibrillation can save your life - whatever the "cause" of that fibrillation.
- tsotha 13y ago>Yes, but to know "why" (I'd much rather say "how") current drugs work you don't need to know "why" people get certain illnesses - that's my issue with the article. Well, that's true. But I think he makes a reasonably compelling argument that we don't in fact know why the current generation of drugs works.