Description
After its unparalleled rise and expansion over the past century, medicine is increasingly criticized both as a science and clinical practice for lacking scientific rigor, for contributing to overmedicalization, and for failing to offer patient-centered care. This criticism highlights serious challenges which indicate that the scope and societal role of medicine are likely to be altered in the 21st century. Somogy Varga's ground-breaking book offers a new perspective on the challenges, showing that they converge on fundamental philosophical questions about the nature and aim of medicine. Addressing these questions, Varga presents a philosophical examination of the norms and values constitutive of medicine and offers new perspectives on how to address the challenges that the criticism raises. His book will offer valuable input for rethinking the agenda of medical research, health care delivery, and the education of health care personnel.
Table of Contents
Introduction: medicine at the crossroads; 1. Challenges to medicine at the end of ITS 'golden Age'; 2. Toward a normative philosophy of medicine; 3. Science and the nature of medicine: the systematicity thesis; 4. Inquiry in medical science: the understanding thesis; 5. Understanding in medicine; 6. The aim of medicine I: the autonomy thesis; 7. The aim of medicine II: current Alternatives; 8. Rethinking the challenges: the Moderate Position; Conclusion: disorientation and the 'greatest benefit to mankind'; References; Index.
