Where medicine went wrong : rediscovering the path to complexity / Bruce J. West.

Singapore : World Scientific, 2006.

xi, 337 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm.

Chance and variation : the myth of equality ; slaughter's cafe ; what are the odds? ; odds against smallpox ; information and chance -- The expectation of health : control and cybernetics ; temperature regulation ; respiration regulation ; cardiac regulation ; averages are not sufficient -- Even uncertainy has laws : randomness and measurement ; chaos and determinism ; wisdom is not static ; a new tradition -- The uncertainty of health : the different kinds of scientists ; the emperor in exile ; what is wrong with the law of errors ; the inverse power-law distribution -- How the physical and life sciences are different ; only the few matter -- Fractal physiology : scaling in physiological data ; allometric relationships ; fractal heartbeats ; intermittent chaos and colored noise ; fractal breathing ; fractal gait ; fractal temperature ; fractal gut ; fractal neurons ; internetwork interactions -- Complexity : random networks ; scale-free networks ; controlling complexity ; allometric control ; disease as loss of control -- Disease as loss of complexity : pathological periodicities ; heart failure and fractal loss ; breakdown of gait ; summing-up.

Includes bibliographical references (p. [317]-326) and index.