Natural kinds, natural history and the clinician-researcher.

Recent medical research has been based on a flawed rationale of clinical innovation (here termed the 'basic-to-mega model') which neglects the human organism as a vital focus of clinical scientific study. The consequent over-concentration upon cellular and population levels of analysis has probably damaged the rate of therapeutic progress. The key role in medical research should be acknowledged to lie with clinician-researchers whose 'experimental animal' is the patient and whose 'end-points' are health and disease. The distinctive strength of the clinician-researcher derives from an ability to combine understanding of the 'natural kinds' (i.e. true biological categories) relevant to human disease, with experience of the 'natural history' of disease (i.e. its longitudinal pattern, including the response to interventions). Such knowledge is explicitly formalized by the activities of clinical science and clinical epidemiology. A sufficient supply of active clinician-researchers is the catalyst of innovation, and an insufficient supply is currently a rate-limiting factor in therapeutic progress.