In 2007, I was trying to find answers to my father's questions about his disease treatment. I did this in my own way, with the logic and mindset of the engineer I am; an electronics engineer, IT architect, and accustomed to analyzing complex systems. What I found did not all make sense. But through the legacy of rheumatologist Dr. Thomas Brown (MD) I found Prof. Trevor Marshall (PhD) and his molecular research. And with it, his insights into the effects of vitamin D.

I couldn't imagine vitamin D being a big mistake. Or maybe “the biggest mistake medicine has ever made” as Trevor put it, and decided to do my own research. I quickly came to the conclusion that, of all the scientific papers I could get my hands on and read in full, none showed Marshall to be wrong. On the contrary, the data in all those papers supported his position.

Complex systems are built around principles that provide stability, resilience and resistance. They are full of feedback control systems, built-in redundancy and recovery mechanisms. The human organism also seems to be structured this way physiologically, with all kinds of regulations and feedback, via enzymes, co-enzymes, hormones and pro-hormones.

For an IT person, the design principles are very recognizable. For example, a distributed system in the cloud uses pods and containers to scale efficiently, with the containers acting like small servers that operate independently in an orchestrated larger whole. In the human organism, it is the tissues with the cells, whereby the cells provide for their own needs independently, locally and autonomously.

Chronic and/or age-related diseases seem to affect us all eventually. That is why I think it is important that scientific research into this is conducted in a correct manner, without conflicting interests. Trevor Marshall was an outsider at the time who used Open Source software and Linux computers for molecular modeling, in order to accurately visualize what happens at that molecular level in our cells. I found his presentation to the FDA from 2006 very impressive.

In 2008, I joined his non-profit organization and have contributed in many ways over the years since. For example, I was co-founder and vice-chair of the European sister organization (2010-2015) with which we regularly organized international meetings as you can see below.

Ron van den Dungen