Pharmacy will be the most important subject of the future.
What butterfly effect do the medicines we take have on the human body?
: The most complete guide to understanding the interaction between the complex system of the human body and drugs.

★ This is the book that has become a must-read for students preparing for medical and nursing school!
★ Ho-Am Medical Prize, Korea's Best Scientist and Engineer Award... General lectures by world-renowned scholars in the fields of medicine and biotechnology
★ Chaos Foundation Recommended Books, Chonnam National University Pharmacy Department Recommended Books

"The Link Between Life and Medicine," which has been gaining popularity as a must-read for medical and nursing school students and has been included on the recommended reading lists of many educational institutions, has been published in a revised and expanded edition.
This book, which has been reprinted continuously since going out of print and sold at high prices in used bookstores, has been of great help to students taking their first steps into the field of knowledge by covering the knowledge of the interaction between our body and medicine in an easy-to-understand manner in one volume.

This book, which explains the complex system of the human body through unpredictable natural phenomena, guides you into the world of medicine with various cases and examples, from why drugs that act on the human body's network cannot be consistently effective to the creation of new drugs and drug addiction.
It also explains the effects of drugs on our bodies and the problems caused by drugs so that anyone can easily understand why we need to know about drugs now.

The author of this book, Professor Kim Seong-hun of Yonsei University College of Pharmacy, discovered various new functional proteins involved in cancer, immunity, and metabolic diseases, and has become a world-renowned authority in the pharmaceutical and bio fields by publishing papers in the scientific journals Cell and Science.
This book, which combines essential knowledge and insights for life science professionals and provides insight into the increasingly important bioindustry, will be an excellent introduction to pharmacy, providing readers with an engaging and engaging educational experience.

We, living in the 21st century, define the present as an era of advanced science and technology and expect that science will solve all our problems.
Indeed, the average life expectancy of the global population has increased by leaps and bounds, and many scientific and technological challenges seem poised to be solved, such as the discussion of colonizing Mars and commercializing space travel, and the realization of artificial intelligence technology.
But the reality is different.
More than ever before, humanity lives in uncertainty and anxiety.

--- p.5

If we look at the human body from an anatomical perspective, we can see that the various tissues and organs are systematically connected, and it appears to be no different from the highly complex structure of a car or airplane.
But even if babies were born in the same hospital on the same day, we cannot explain or predict their lives and futures any more than we can explain or predict something about cars.
It is impossible to know what kind of life and death process one will go through.
--- pp.26~27

There are countless other cases of weakening caused by unexpected side effects of drugs.
Bayer's Baycol, a cholesterol-lowering drug, has been linked to a muscle cell destruction condition called rhabdomyolysis, and has been linked to 33 deaths in the United States alone since its release in 1997, with over 100 cases reported worldwide.
This led Bayer to decide in 2001 to stop selling and voluntarily recall Bycol.
Bayer had predicted that Bycol would grow to a market size of 900 million euros in 2001 and 27 billion euros in 2002, but failed to attract investment as its stock price fell day after day due to the controversy over side effects.

--- p.59

It is advisable to be cautious when you come across medicines or health foods advertised on the market that have unclear evidence and are a panacea or that have no side effects.
As long as the genes and proteins that make up our bodies are intertwined like a spider's web, and as long as our knowledge remains incomplete, premature confidence can be toxic.
--- p.65

Like Viagra, if you make good use of the side effects that appear from the original intended effect, it can become a motivation to develop new effects.
Just as we cannot predict hidden side effects because we do not yet fully understand the network map between genes and proteins that make up the body, new benefits are also discovered without prior prediction, so they always seem like coincidences.

--- p.78

Addiction can be thought of as the opposite of drug tolerance.
Our bodies have a regulatory network to maintain homeostasis of physiological processes.
However, if a certain stimulus is repeatedly received for a long time, the body eventually adapts to that stimulus.
If we use this in a good way, our body will acquire some special skills or abilities, but on the other hand, if it is a bad habit for our body or especially if it is a stimulus by a certain drug, our body's physiological control network will continue to be out of the normal range for a long time, so it will adapt to the new stimulus.

--- p.109

Just as each person has a different appearance, each person's reaction to medication also varies.
Humans have DNA consisting of approximately 3 billion base pairs, 99.9 percent of which are identical.
A difference of about 0.1 percent can make such a huge difference between individuals.
Therefore, if we can unlock the secrets of the 0.1 percent of DNA sequences, we can find out what types of diseases each individual should be particularly careful of, predict diseases before they occur, and prescribe medications tailored to each individual's characteristics.
Scientists believe that this era of personalized treatment will soon become a reality.

--- pp.151~152

The COVID-19 pandemic, which has plunged the entire human race into a state of panic for the past three years and continues to this day, clearly demonstrates how crucial the ability to develop new drugs is to human survival.
Therefore, no matter how many failures there are and how difficult the path may be, new drug development research must not stop.
A country that gives up on developing new drugs is like giving its citizens' health and lives to foreign pharmaceutical companies.
I still vividly remember how desperately the world scrambled to secure vaccines and treatments during the COVID-19 pandemic.

--- p.198