GENERAL INTRODUCTION This study of the concept of health is an attempt to combine central ideas in modern philosophy of medicine with certain results from analytical action theory.
It may be unnecessary to some to publish a text on sexuality in 1986 since the popular press speaks of the sexual revolution as if it were over and was possibly a mistake.
That concern about human genetics is at the top of many lists of issues requiring intense discussion from scientific, political, social, and ethical points of view is today no surprise.
The germs of the ideas in this book became implanted in me during my experience as a resident in clinical pathology at Boston University Medical Center.
As the field of bioethics has matured, increasing attention is being paid to how bioethical issues are treated in different moral and religious traditions and in different parts of the world.
As noted in Volume 1, the Yearbook series alternates between a biennial volume tracing recent theological discussions on topics in bioethics and a biennial volume tracing recent regional discussions in bioethics.
A PHENOMENOLOGICAL APPROACH My interest in exploring the nature of the patient's and the physician's understanding of illness has grown out of my own experience as a multiple sclerosis patient.
As the field of bioethics has matured, increasing attention is being paid to how bioethical issues are treated in different moral and religious traditions and in different regions of the world.
GENERAL INTRODUCTION This study of the concept of health is an attempt to combine central ideas in modern philosophy of medicine with certain results from analytical action theory.
No student or colleague of Marjorie Grene will miss her incisive presence in these papers on the study and nature of living nature, and we believe the new reader will quickly join the stimulating discussion and critique which Professor Grene steadily provokes.
Although the investigation and regulation of the faculties of the human mind appear to be the proper and sole concern of philosophers, you see that they are in some part nevertheless so little foreign to the medical forum that while someone may deny that they are proper to the physician he cannot deny that physicians have the obliga- tion to philosophize.
Our technological culture has an extremely dynamic character: old ways of reproducing ourselves, managing nature and keeping animals are continually replaced by new ones; norms and values with respect to our bodies, food production, health care and environmental protection are regularly being put up for discussion.
Advances in genetics, such as the Human Genome Project's successful mapping of the human genome and the discovery of ever more sites of disease-related mutations, invite re-examination of basic concepts underlying our fundamental social practices and institutions.
As the fields of philosophy of medicine and bioethics have developed in the United States, the philosophical perspective of phenomenology has been largely ignored.
This Festschrift is presented to Professor Hans Jonas on the occasion of his seventy-fifth birthday, as affirmation of the contributors' respect and admiration.
Over a period of a year, the symposium on clinical judgment has taken shape as a volume devoted to the analysis of how knowledge claims are framed in medicine and how choices of treatment are made.
This volume developed from and around a series of six lectures sponsored by Rice University and the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston in the Fall of 1976.
by MICHEL FOUCAULT Everyone knows that in France there are few logicians but many historians of science; and that in the 'philosophical establishment' - whether teaching or research oriented - they have occupied a considerable position.
On May 13-15, 1982, some 50 scientists and scholars - physicians, philos- ophers and social scientists - convened at Hasselby Castle in Stockholm for the first Nordic Symposium on the Philosophy of Medicine.
The idea of reviewing the ethical concerns of ancient medicine with an eye as to how they might instruct us about the extremely lively disputes of our own contemporary medicine is such a natural one that it surprises us to real- ize how very slow we have been to pursue it in a sustained way_ Ideologues have often seized on the very name of Hippocrates to close off debate about such matters as abortion and euthanasia - as if by appeal to a well-known and sacred authority that no informed person would care or dare to oppose_ And yet, beneath the polite fakery of such reference, we have deprived our- selves of a familiarity with the genuinely 'unsimple' variety of Greek and Roman reflections on the great questions of medical ethics.
The expense of critical care and emergency medicine, along with widespread expectations for good care when the need arises, pose hard moral and political problems.
The culture of contemporary medicine is the object of investigation in this book; the meanings and values implicit in biomedical knowledge and practice and the social processes through which they are produced are examined through the use of specific case studies.
From the tone of the report by the President's Commission for the Study of Ethical Problems in Medicine and Biomedical and Behavioral Re- search, one might conclude that the whole-brain-oriented definition of death is now firmly established as an enduring element of public policy.
This volume, which has developed from the Fourteenth Trans- Disciplinary Symposium on Philosophy and Medicine, September 5-8, 1982, at Tel Aviv University, Israel, contains the contributions of a group of distinguished scholars who together examine the ethical issues raised by the advance of biomedical science and technology.
CATHOLIC PERSPECTIVES AND CONTEMPORARY MEDICAL MORALS A Catholic perspective on medical morals antedates the current world- wide interest in medical and biomedical ethics by many centuries[5].
The growth of knowledge and its effects on the practice of medicine have been issues of philosophical and ethical interest for several decades and will remain so for many years to come.
