Twentieth Century Dogmas Prevent Sustainable Healthcare |Biomedgrid

One of the major impediments to sustainable healthcare is a rigid adherence to several outdated twentieth century scientific dogmas. At the center of these pre-microbiome dogmas is the mischaracterization of humans by much of the healthcare industry. We have been and, in many cases continue to be, viewed as a single species rather than a microbiome-driven, multi-species superorganism containing trillions of microbial co-partners. This prior and ongoing misunderstanding of the basic biology of humans across broad sectors of medicine, the healthcare industry, public health and governmental officials and some patients resulted in errors. These errors were not only in delivered healthcare but also in safety evaluations to protect human health (i.e., food, drug, and environmental chemical safety assessment which did not take inconsideration the microbiome). The continued pursuit of preventative and therapeutic medicine using the single-species fallacy (and ignoring the fact that we a majority microbial by both genes and cells) has ramifications. It spurs on the epidemic of noncommunicable diseases and conditions (NCDs) as well as the loss of human microbiota needed for colonization resistance against pathobionts. This opinion paper.