Lewis S. Coleman,
Introduction
“There is only one health, but diseases are many. Likewise, there appears to be one fundamental force that heals, although the myriad schools of medicine all have their favorite ways of cajoling it into action.”—Robert O. Becker
Real science is creative, as much so as painting, Sculpture, or writing. Beauty, variously defined, is the criterion for art, and likewise a good theory has elegance, proportion, and simplicity that we find beautiful. Just as the skilled artist omits the extraneous and directs our attention to a unifying concept, so the scientist strives to find a relatively simple order underlying the apparent chaos of perception. ——Robert O. Becker
Medicine is poised at the threshold of revolutionary advance. This began at the turn of the previous century, when the impending apocalypse of WWI inspired governments to promote medical research, if only because disease is deadlier than bullets and bombs. War is the mainspring of medical advance, and it produced an era of productive research fueled by military rigor, vigor, discipline, and determination. At the outset of this fertile era, Dr. Johannes Friedrich Miescher discovered DNA and theorized that it retains and replicates genetic inheritance, but his theory remained useless for lack of a testable description of the DNA mechanism that explains how it works [1]. Somewhat later, Dr. Hans Selye postulated the presence of a “stress mechanism” that causes disease when it becomes hyperactivated by environmental stress [2]. Such a theory would enable physicians to direct their efforts at the cause of disease so as to achieve reliable cures, as opposed to judging their results on the basis of fickle symptoms. However, Selye’s theory also remained useless for lack of a mechanism that explains how it works.
Soon after the conclusion of disastrous worldwide warfare, Watson and Crick discovered and described the molecular structure of DNA. Their achievement explained how DNA retains and replicates the genetic blueprint, which caused great excitement in the world of medical research that is impossible to appreciate from today’s distant perspective. It came on the heels of penicillin and polio vaccine, and it seemed that medical advance would conquer disease altogether. However, the experts of the time knew that the DNA mechanism by itself was medically useless, because didn’t explain how the DNA “genetic blueprint” is converted into embryological development, nor did it explain disease, tissue repair, hemodynamic physiology, or environmental stress, so it couldn’t confer useful treatments. This focused attention on Selye’s ideas, and inspired an intense international search for a testable stress mechanism that would theoretically work closely with DNA to convert the DNA genetic blueprint into embryological development, and then remain active to repair tissues, regulate organs, and explain disease. This powerfully simple concept inspired an intense international effort to find the stress mechanism, which was widely expected to revolutionize medical science.
The era of stress research lasted about 30 years and produced important advances including immune theory, the coagulation cascade, and apoptosis, but it failed to find any clue of the elusive stress mechanism. As a result, governments withdrew support for stress research soon after I attended New York Medical College. To my great fortune, the school had retained Dr. Johannes Rhodin, a famous Swedish expert on stress theory and pioneer of electron microscopy, to upgrade its basic sciences curriculum. His two-year sojourn coincided with my basic medical science education, so that I enjoyed both his improved curriculum and his spellbinding lectures on stress theory. He deserves posthumous recognition for paving the path to discovery [3].
Several years later, I stumbled upon fresh information about coagulation factor VIII, which piqued my curiosity and inspired an extensive review of published research using computerized Internet technology that hadn’t existed during the era of stress research. During the following six years this revealed fresh information from unrelated research that enabled me to describe the elusive stress mechanism [4]. Still later I comprehended its extended implications for biology as well as medicine. If this had happened perhaps 20 years earlier, it would have entailed intense interest, or even great excitement, but by this time stress research was long abandoned, nearly forgotten, and relegated to the realm of the Unicorn, where it remains. Therefore, I published my findings in my book called “50 Years Lost in Medical Advance: The Discovery of Hans Selye’s Stress Mechanism [5].”
The discovery of the stress mechanism enables the “unified theory of medicine” that was anticipated by Hans Selye. It clarifies the cause of critical illnesses, chronic diseases, infectious diseases, and malignancy, and confers practical, safe, reliable treatments that control harmful stress mechanism hyperactivity, restore organ function, and cure disease. It guides productive research to develop profitable new treatments and identify the mysterious mechanism that communicates the DNA blueprint from chromosomes trapped within the thick walls of the nucleus to the stress mechanism outside the cell. It promises to introduce a new era of health, prosperity, and longevity that is free from the eternal curse of disease and premature death.
The next great advances in medicine and biology will be the clarification of the genetic code, and the discovery of the mysterious mechanism that communicates the genetic blueprint outside the cell. This knowledge will one day enable humans to alter evolution, with implications that presently reside in the realm of science fiction. But before these blessings can be realized, the mammalian stress mechanism must be tested, confirmed, and implemented, whereupon the world will look different. I urge everyone who reads this to promote the restoration of stress theory to its rightful place as the prevailing paradigm of productive medical and biological research.
