Abstract
This paper has been inspired by two contrasting views on modern medicine. One is the conviction, popular since at least some 100 years, that medicine is becoming progressively more effective. Drawing on a growing store of knowledge and technology, modern science will ultimately enable man to live out his natural life-time with a minimum of ill-health or disease. The other view is more recent and less optimistic. Since the late 1960s it has been observed that modern medicine often impedes effective health care, especially under conditions of poverty. It draws away means and manpower needed for the prevention and treatment of wholesale health-deficiencies of the general population, and spends them on sophisticated diagnosis and repair of the afflictions of the urban upper class [3, 5].
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Thung, P.J. (1990). The Growth of Medical Knowledge: An Epistemological Exploration. In: Ten Have, H.A.M.J., Kimsma, G.K., Spicker, S.F. (eds) The Growth of Medical Knowledge. Philosophy and Medicine, vol 36. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-2025-5_6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-2025-5_6
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