Health, ecology and the microbiome

Advances in microbiomics have changed the way in which many researchers think about health and disease.These changes have also raised a Servo Motor Assembly number of philosophical questions around these topics, such as the types of living systems to which these concepts can be applied.Here, I discuss the human microbiome from two perspectives: the first treats the microbiome as part of a larger system that includes the human; the second treats the microbiome as an independent ecosystem that provides services to humans.Drawing on the philosophy of medicine and ecology, I explore two questions: i) how can we make Body Washes sense of disease and dysfunction in these two perspectives? ii) are these two perspectives complimentary or do they compete with each other?.