When Healing Becomes Educating, Vol. 2 - Waldorf Research Institute

The new science clearly has enormous significance in medicine. Present
views of anatomy, physiology and pathology will have to be completely
revised, and our paradigms will begin to change.
The anatomical structures of the organism are essentially based
on fractals. Higher laws pertain, and individual structures can only be
understood in the context of the whole. Thus the vascular system from
the aorta to the finest capillaries is a coherent whole and clearly a fractal
structure. The Koch curve accommodates an infinitely long line in a small
area, and in the same way the vascular system presents a vast surface area
within a limited space. The same applies to other structures such as the
composition of the duodenal mucosa and the bronchial system. The system
of uriniferous tubules in the kidney, of bile ducts in the liver and the
Purkinje network in the heart have been shown to be fractal structures.
A question that is now being considered is whether fractal scaling is a
universal rather than an isolated phenomenon in morphology and perhaps
also the clue to the mystery of DNA coding. Simulation of goose down
shows that the phenomenal air holding capacity of the natural product
was due to the fractal nodes and branching that made up the structure of
keratin, the basic protein of the down. 10
Fractal laws are not limited to organ systems, however, but extend as
far as the molecular range. Molecular surfaces such as the glycocalyx or cell
coat of the cell membrane with its sugar residues have a fractal structure
that enables the complex linking of cells by specific lectins known as
glycoproteins, a linkage that is in more than one plane. Cell contact is
assumed to be 2.2–2.5 dimensional.
Fractal geometry has already found practical application in medical
research. It makes it possible to determine myocardial perfusion patterns
with some inhalation anesthetics. Descriptive statistics, e.g., using mean
values and standard deviations, do not permit adequate analysis of these
patterns, as it is not possible to cover localization and adjacence relations
for individual regions. 11
With regard to physiology, that is, the functions of the living organism
and its parts, it has to be accepted that these are highly complex, non-linear
processes with feedback, i.e., action complexes. Intermediate products may
promote or inhibit the initial conditions or influence the sequence of
reactions indirectly via other, equally complex reaction systems. A typical
example is the tricarboxylic acid cycle which relates to a wide variety of
metabolic processes in the liver cell (Fig. 3), influencing them and being
governed by them. Other examples would be the coagulation and the
immune systems. Everything interacts and forms a whole in itself. The
thinking which still prevails today, based on a linear sequence of individual,
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