In 2007 the door to the future of induced pluripotent stem cells(iPSC)for the application in human medicine was opened by later Japanese Nobel prize winner(2012)Dr. Shinya Yamanaka.
The increasingly rapid development of medicine urges helping professions of all kind to create a sufficient and multidimensional way of integrating modern research into contemporary and comprehensive medicine.
This holistic approach to the daily needs of our patients despite so many promising medical developments faces a lot of threats against health, happiness and a meaningful life.
Nowadays medicine is confronted with a rapidly growing number of diseases caused by “Self-destructive life-style”(Nagata, 1999).
“Patient- and disease-specific iPSCs are clearly the ideal tool for efficiently characterizing the individual phenotype, while also disentangling the confounding influences of environment and lifestyle”(JAMA, 4/2015).
These diseases are linked with the way, how people live their life. The abuse of alcohol, drugs and also smoking reduces the quality of life(QOL)a lot and leads to deaths ahead of time. Lack of physical activity, unhealthy eating and behavior, such as being addicted to excessive computer gaming disconnects people from what really matters in life. They live more and more in virtuality than in real creative life and nature.
The scientific results of iPSC technology promise in a way, that in the upcoming decades many diseases will be treated successfully by this new medical interventions. Cancer, coronary heart diseases, diabetes mellitus, hypertension, strokes and other medical disorders will affect our patients and iPSC technology will probably be seen as a comfortable repair shop and service center. But this will only be one side of the coin.
The other side is the large field of mental illnesses, of chronic diseases and of the influential and basal difficulties of those patients, who are disappointed, frustrated, desperate and embittered of life.
Their search for meaning in life will be increasingly ineffective and they will suffer and sometimes have suicidal ideas.
So beside wonderful medical improvements and developing civilization in industrialized countries, helping professions will more than ever have to care about the human soul, the psyche and the spiritual dimension in life.
Viktor Frankl, the founder of Logotherapy and Existential Analysis described these dimensions as “existential” and specifically human.
If we want patients to change and improve their life style we will have to give them a motivation, a goal to reach and we will have to train them in creating a meaningful life every day.
Beside the factors of the human constitution, of hereditary influences and of personality the human behavior is the most limiting factor in living a healthy life. Our behavior influences our life style and the “core of life style is meaning”(Nagata).
Viktor Frankl had deep respect for the human ability to realize values in life. He found, that turning “possibilities into realities” is the most influential factor for finding a purpose and meaning in life.
Living meaningfully not only means to reach an improvement in the mood and in quality of life.
It also means to influence and stabilize our immunological system, even in the deep somatic level.
iPSC technology means also precision medicine and in this new era of medicine, the individualized approach to disease and healing is the goal.
“It is hoped, that new data-driven disease taxonomies coupled with targeted therapies will transform medicine into an efficient and modern enterprise”(JAMA, 4/2015).
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