ABSTRACT
For molecular medicine, one of the central challenges is to remain receptive to the complexity of factors that influence pathological processes, and to realize that beyond the known causes of diseases, a myriad of cofactors interact. The tools and the impetus to develop expertness in determining, in advance, what people are prone to contract any specified disease are at hand; the new science needs only to be developed. Roger Williams explains what had hindered the development of propetology until his time: an immature view of heredity and life was the reason for the rejection of the notion that many diseases have genetic roots. They observed that only in cases of genetically susceptible individuals were specific drugs the specific agent that caused disease. Around 1975, a feverish search began for the correlations between quantifiable markers and the stage of cancer diseases, first and foremost breast cancer.
