Quick Nav Pharmacy Times Drug Interactions  The Ignorance of
Certainty - "Facts" Sometimes Aren't  Published Online:
Thursday, September 1, 2005   [ Request Print ]  Virtually all
of the great scientists over the past century have recognized
that absolute certainty is simply unattainable in science. One
can arrive very close to the goal of absolute certainty?for
example, with the germ theory of infectious disease?but there is
a fundamental sense in which all theories are in principle
replaceable by something that more closely approximates the
truth. In other words, all scientific truths are provisional,
notwithstanding that some of them are astonishingly close to
reality.  By historical standards, the scientific field of drug-
drug interactions is relatively new. Exactly 40 years ago the
first major symposium on drug interactions was held in Britain.
As with any emerging discipline, knowledge of drug interactions
has advanced by fits and starts. The relatively recent
discoveries of cytochrome P-450 isozymes an