Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 August 2014
The introduction of informatics in the study of hereditary diseases, i.e., the birth of informatic medical genetics, marks a turning point in the history of medicine.
The biological informatics is the product of molecular genetics on one hand, and cybernetics on the other. The former has brought the study of the hereditary phenomena to the level of nucleic acids; while the latter, originally devised to the service of automation, reflects a number of fundamental biological phenomena, also at the molecular level.
The informatics of hereditary diseases is referred to a damage of the operative units acting to secure the development and homeostasis of the organism. The mechanistic conception of the damage is complemented by the energetic and chronologic concept.
On such foundations a modern conception of the genetics of diabetes is thus formulated. The clinical inadequacy of the static genealogical model is stressed, and the introduction of a dynamic model is suggested, taking into account the gradual chronological extinction of the normoglycemic genotype.
Conferenza tenuta in occasione della Settimana degli Ospedali, Roma.