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Old 11-28-2007, 10:13 AM   #8 (permalink)
The_FD
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I am sorry my scheme is still to complicated to fit the discussion here, so I'll be going with a rather more general problem.

The initial question is
Can Normal and Pathology be divided in two or can are they the same?
ie: Is pathology an entity totally separated from the normal state, or is pathology the normal to its extreme?

Here is an example: a broken leg is clearly different from a non broken one. Can you see a straight bone or do you see it broken into two pieces? Here it seems that normal and pathology are clearly two distinct entities.

Now the same question for diabetes (which is a defined as a too high blood glucose concentration). First what is the limit for diabetes? 1g of glucose per liter of blood? 1.1, 1.2, 1.5 etc??? Then, glucose in the blood is normal (it is even vital to feed your cells) so how diabetes and normal blood glucose level are different? Is it a threshold? Isn't it just that the normal state is extended to a too large point that it causes pathology? This time, it seems than one cannot differentiate normal and pathology as clearly as in the case of a broken leg.

Hope everyone sees how categorization may be a very unappropriated way to think of some problems. I prefer to think in term of logic applicated to the given case rather than to apply a method that has been shown to work elsewhere but not in my case.
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