ABSTRACT

Physicians have all but abandoned the idea of a vis vitalis, a force of life that controls health and disease, life and death. Modern medicine, instead, is based on scientific principles and its practice is rooted in the idea that disease states are the result of genetic and metabolic defects and caused by toxins, drugs, or pathogens that invade the body and distort cellular homeostasis and growth. The successful use of medicinal drugs to intervene in diseased states, suppress infections, inflammations and pain, reverse cancer, and fight depression are all proof of principles of the molecular basis of disease. Pharmacology is the science that explains how drugs affect metabolism and

physiology and that genetics has a role in how drugs work in people. The discovery that a lack of essential nutrients like vitamins, amino acids, fatty acids, and minerals stunts growth, causes gums to bleed or bones to easily fracture is consistent with the link between molecules and diseases.