This is a thesis examining bronchial asthma and allergic conditions (Type 1 Hypersensitivity) postulating them as a result of a deficiency of the enzyme lipoprotein lipase and glucuronidation which functions in phase II detoxification processes. Structured and laid out as an example of a concorded hypothesis for the purposes of examining methodologies in the the sciences and knowledge production, the document is designed to provoke and facilitate discussion on the formation of hypotheses. In this case the content of the thesis is almost beside the point.  The question of how we build and document understandings so that arguments may be discussable, accountable and testable is of greater interest.

This is a complete manuscript written and developed over many years which represents a thorough study of bronchial asthma and the atopic conditions.  It draws together lines of investigation such that a pattern is suggested in the biomedical events.

 

I have interpreted those biomedical events in a particular way so as to suggest these allergic conditions as a deficiency of a particular enzyme which metabolises substances that stimulate lung muscle (eicosanoids) and a medium for detoxification (glucuronic acid) the body uses to eliminate toxins and alien substances (xenobiotics).

 

Competitive inhibition occurs in the asthmatic/atopic where xenobiotics (like aspirin) produce a demand for substances needed to make them water soluble so that they can pass into the urine and be eliminated. I hypothesis that because glucuronic acid is also a structural component of an enzyme, lipoprotein lipase, which regulates eicosanoids similarly through the chemical characteristic of increasing the water solubility (polarity) of these fatty substances.

 

Part of the perspective in the thesis is that what is discussed as ‘the immune system’ is not simply a system for dealing with external biological threats but as the only self directing mobile cells of the body (as far as I am aware), immune cells perform logistical tasks necessary for maintaining health.  In the light of this it might be reasonable to question the notion of autoimmune disease as framing the body as malfunctioning; this thesis raises the question of whether what we are seeing is a situation where the immune system is involved in triage logistics under a state of deficit – i.e. that the immune cells are ‘attacking’ the mast cell populations in order to requisit and repurpose the materials in order to deal with an emergent requirement to say eliminate penicillin or aspirin from the system.

 

The idea that over time through exposure to environmental toxins and drugs the body can become depleted of the resources required to detoxify and remove them from the system needs to be considered.  This research study has been written and returned to several times in order to see advances in literature and research techniques.

 

Since 1998 biomedical technology has significantly advanced revealing techniques which have enabled whole areas of research to be done in areas that had previously only been notionalisable by inference, deduction and logical reaching.  For example, prostaglandins and eicosanoids are very short lived and volatile substances which for a long time hindered providing the proofs of further documenting the biochemistry of tissues.

 

The project over time has retained interest because every few years I look at further studies done on niche biochemistry which fit into the overall framework of the emergent pattern I am investigating.  The work documenting the eicosanoids has become abundant, as has that of the leukotrienes, toxicology, phase I and phase II detoxification pathways; from independent clinical and scholarly teams around the world.

 

The emergence of the information age has bolstered the evolution of the sciences, the collective grasping of standards of scientific method(s) like peer review, the access to knowledge and libraries, and the communication of knowledge. Even though there are the same issues with human foibles and distorting factors such as financial benefit, it is the long stretch of time that feigns out faulty thinking and affords us to test ideas.

 

Over time the way which information is communicated develops.  The work of Drew Whitworth offers keen insight into understanding the book as a technology and discussing what a learning environment is.  It is in this direction that my interests extend and offer this project.

 

 

As with all ideas, they become hypotheses when they are presented in a structured way that attempts to provide a clear rational for what is taking place.  The traditions of scientific method involve citing where each piece of information has been drawn from, and providing a bibliography of references so that readers can go back to the original texts to explore the original context and meaning.

 

The overall project which I am engaging in extends to thinking about how we present knowledge in a coherent fashion so that we can more readily analyse the contentions which are laid out before us.  In the document you find here you will find a concorded hypothesis – that is, a hypothesis which incorporates into same space, the original text found in each of the references accompanied by the meaning which I have drawn from it.

 

The document is typeset as a printed document with contents page and index to aid navigation and internal cross referencing of facts.  It illustrates a consideration of the aesthetic components of knowledge, in as much as, an attempt has been made to visually lay out the many pieces of information so as to aid in the understanding of the interrelationship of each statement.

 

Each chapter starts with a series of statements, which through the chapter are dealt with one by one.  Each statement then draws on a specific original reference, showing where it is accessible, as well as the original text.  At the end of each reference you will find a series of statements which have been drawn from the original text with numbered indications of where in the text each has been drawn from.

 

 

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The intention here is to borrow from a scholarly tradition of the church.  In a concordance we will commonly find an original text accompanied by one or several transliterations – for example from one language into another – as well as analytic notes on how one might interpret the texts authentically to original context.

 

This exercise is an important examination of the treatment of language which preserves meaning past its reconstitution.  This should aid the reader in weighing up the ability of the writer to edify without distorting the facts.  It is also a matter of convenience on the readers end, saving them the legwork of finding the original texts so that they can compare them.

 

As for the hypothesis in medicine, this is up for grabs.  I propose that a robust hypothesis should be overwhelmingly corroborated by independently produced sources; the facts – when all laid out – should agree with each other.  In the formation of ideas from literature review there is a whole line of work and thinking which can be done before we move to physically testing a hypothesis.  I argue that in this dawning information age, deeper understandings of how we can formulate clear, testible, and practically useful ideas are yet to emerge.  This is an exploration of the techniques we can use to formulate hypotheses from literature.

 

In developing a series of writings on the philosophy of knowledge and science, I have been trying to address key issues and methods for arriving at an understanding of “how we know what we think we know”.  The accompanying science primers are basic liner notes on central notions we find in developing scientific knowledge.  Popularly, scientific knowledge was articulated as testible (falsifiable) by Karl Popper, and in science we look for testible ideas and challenge them so that we can – over time – arrive at an understanding of where an idea sits on a scale of ‘increasingly reliable knowledge’.

 

As a project I return to this study in order to see if new research fits the emerging explanation or necessarily alters it.  Forthcoming is a new section of the thesis gathering together newer and more articulate understandings of the mast cells, the immune activity, the substances being released, the substances which produce an atopic reaction, and the observed interplay of these factors as reported by research teams independently in different parts of the world.

 

The work presented here is part of the public domain and is thus belongs to everyone.