Idiopathic

Clinicians use the term "idiopathic" when they can describe what's happening (the diagnosis) but can't identify why it's happening (the underlying cause).

Example: "idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis" = "lung scarring where the cause isn't known."

The word derives from the Greek idios ("one's own," "personal," or "peculiar") and pathos ("suffering" or "feeling"). Originally it referred to a "disease of itself" — a primary disease — as opposed to a symptomatic one: a disease that is the secondary consequence of something else.

These two conventional categories map directly onto a distinction we make in the Germanic New Medicine:

A "symptomatic disease" is a symptom arising from a biological program — the secondary result of injury, poisoning, malnutrition, parasites, pregnancy, or the mechanical effects of a special biological program (for example, a colon blocked by a growing tumour would be a symptomatic disease resulting from a special biological program). The symptomatic disease does not begin in the psyche with a DHS.

An "idiopathic disease," practically speaking, is a symptom arising from a special biological program: one that does begin in the psyche, with a biological conflict, at the moment of a DHS (for example, "spontaneous" cell proliferation in the colon, producing a tumour, would be an "idiopathic disease" resulting from a biological conflict in the psyche).

Conventional medicine assumes every symptom must be caused by a trauma, injury, or some other mechanical or chemical failure and has therefore posited many theories to explain idiopathic diseases. The most pervasive (though thoroughly disproven) of these theories is the Germ Theory of Disease; however, any symptom not obviously a result of trauma, injury, or some other mechanical or chemical event still gets thrown into the "idiopathic" container. In modern usage the term is said to signify "no known cause," which the medical industry is quick to qualify as "the limits of current scientific knowledge, rather than a definitive, inherent lack of a trigger." This qualifier is needed because conventional medicine — through what it calls the "doctrine of specific etiology" — insists a precise, causative physical, chemical, or biological agent must exist for every disease.

It's the same move Louis Pasteur made: confronted with diseases in which no germ could be found, he reasoned that the agent must simply be "too small to see." The virus was invented to fill the gap. "Idiopathic" works the same way. Faced with evidence that a disease did not originate in injury, poisoning, malnutrition, or trauma, conventional medicine does not look elsewhere (to the psyche); instead, it posits unseen agents — viruses and the like — or falls back on the catch-all, "no known cause."

(All disproved hypotheses of origin are kept alive the same way — for example, the disproved theory that cancer begins with genetic damage)

In GNM, we know that every primary (idiopathic) disease in the body originates because of a biological conflict in the psyche, and is part of a special biological program (SBS).

Example: "lung scarring" = "the cumulative result of recurring healing phases of a special biological program involving the lung alveoli (which begins with a 'death fright,' 'suffocation,' or 'asphyxiation' conflict in the psyche)."

The course of a disease is similar whether the program originates in the psyche (a special biological program) or in a precise physical agent such as poisoning, injury, or malnutrition (a biological program).