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Medicine as a Practice and the Ethics of Illness

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Notes

  1. For an overview of these developments see L. Walters J. G. Palmer, The Ethics of Human Gene Therapy, Oxford University Press, New york, 1997.

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  2. For these form of the philosophy of medicine see H.T. Engelhardt, K. W. Wildes, “Medicine, Philosophy of”, in W. T. Reich (ed.), Encyclopedia of Bioethics, Macmillan, New York, 1995, pp. 1680–1684.

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  3. Cf. E. D. Pellegrino, D. C. Thomasma, A Philosophical Basis of Medical Practice, Oxford University Press, New York, 1981, pp.196–199.

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  4. D. C. Thomasma, A Philosophical Basis of Medical Practice, Oxford University Press, New York, 1981 Ibid., p. 63 and 64.

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  5. D. C. Thomasma, A Philosophical Basis of Medical Practice, Oxford University Press, New York, 1981 Ibid., p. 25.

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  6. D. C. Thomasma, A Philosophical Basis of Medical Practice, Oxford University Press, New York, 1981 Ibid. p. 59 and 61.

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  7. D. C. Thomasma, A Philosophical Basis of Medical Practice, Oxford University Press, New York, 1981 Ibid., p.72 and 73.

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  8. Cf. E. G. Aristotele, Metaphycs, A 981a–982a. The basic idea is that a prctical sciences is a formalized (rigorous and objective) cognitive activity with a practical aim.

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  9. Cf. e. g. Nicomachean Ethics, I, 1094a; I, 1097a; II, 1104a; V, 1138b; VI, 1138b; VI, 1141a; VI, 1143b; VI, 1145b.

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  10. Nicomachean Ethics, VI, 1140 a, (trans. D. Ross).

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  11. Ibidem.

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  12. Nicomachean Ethics II, 1104 a (trans D. Ross): “matters concerned with conduct and questions of what is good for us have no fixity, any more than matters of health. The general account beings of this nature, the account of particular cases is yet more lacking in exactness; for they do not fall under any art or precept, but the agents themselves must in each case consider what is appropriate to the occasion, as happens also in the art of medicine or of navigation”.

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  13. I tried to suggest some considerations in this direction in “The desire for health and the promises of medicine”, Medicine, Health Care and Philosophy1 (1998): 21–30.

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  14. In a roughly similar way, Pellegrino and Thomasma suggest that the health is a “relational good”, cfr. For the Patient’s Good, Oxford university Press, New York, 1988.

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  15. A. MacIntyre, After Virtue, 2nd ed., Notre Dame University Press, Notre Dame,1984, p. 187.

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  16. J. Stout, Ethics After Babel. The Language of Morals and their Discontents, Beacon Press, Boston, 1988, pp. 266ff.

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  17. L. Nordenfelt, “On medicine and other species of health enhancement”, in L. Nordenfelt, P. Tengland (eds.), the Goals and Limits of Medicin, Almqvist & Wiksell International, Stockholm, 1996, pp. 33–49, p.40.

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  18. P. Tengland (eds.), the Goals and Limits of Medicin, Almqvist & Wiksell International, Stockholm, 1996 Ibid., p. 268.

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  19. The Goals of Medicine, Special Supplement, Hastings Center Report 26 (Nov.-Dec. 1996), p. S7.

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  20. Cf. A. MacIntyre, After Virtue, p.191; cf. J. Stout, Ethics After Babel,p. 269.

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  21. Cf. R. Mordacci, “Health as an aanlogical concept”, Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 20 (1995): 475–497.

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  22. Cf. e. g. K Bayertz, Gen Ethics. Technological Intervention in Human Revolution as a Philosophical Problem, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge (MA), 1994.

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  23. Cf. J Harris, Wonderwoman and Superman: The Ethics of Human Biotechnology, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1992.

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Mordacci, R. (2005). Medicine as a Practice and the Ethics of Illness. In: Thomasma, D.C., Weisstub, D.N., Kushner, T.K., Viafora, C. (eds) Clinical Bioethics. International Library of Ethics, Law, and the New Medicine, vol 26. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/1-4020-3593-4_8

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