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Renowned philosophers and medical ethicists debate and discuss the profoundly important concepts of disease and health. Christopher Boorse begins with an extensive reexamination of his seminal definition of disease as a value-free scientific concept. In responding to all those who criticized this view, which came to be called "naturalism" or "neutralism," Boorse clarifies and updates his landmark ideas on this crucial question. Other distinguished thinkers analyze, develop, and oftentimes defend competing, nonnaturalistic theories of disease. Their combined thoughts review and update an issue of central importance in bioethics today. In What is Disease?, renowned philosophers and medical ethicists survey and elucidate the profoundly important concepts of disease and health. Christopher Boorse begins with an extensive reexamination of his seminal definition of disease as a value-free scientific concept. In responding to all those who criticized this view, which came to be called "naturalism" or "neutralism," Boorse clarifies and updates his landmark ideas on this crucial question. Other distinguished thinkers analyze, develop, and oftentimes defend competing, nonnaturalistic theories of disease, including discussions of the relevance of these concepts to the question of "diseased" sexual orientation and to alternative medicine.
What is Disease? brings concerned readers up-to-date in the debate over the proper definition of "disease," a concept of central importance not only for bioethicists, but also for those throughout clinical medicine, sociology, psychology, and law who deal with disease and its associated problems on an everyday basis.
List of contents
A Rebuttal on Health.- Defining Disease: The Question of Sexual Orientation.- Malady.- Toward a Pragmatic Theory of Disease.- Defining Disease: Praxis Makes Perfect.- Disease: Definition and Objectivity.- Disease and Subjectivity.- The Concept of Disease in Alternative Medicine.
Report
"The centerpiece of this volume is an excellent discussion by C. Boorse, who responds to twenty years of criticism and defends his naturalist biostatistical theory of disease....The authors all make good use of contemporary examples of one or currently pathologized conditions, such as homosexuality and mental illness, to test their accounts of disease, thus making this book both conceptually rich and practically relevant for its readers."-Religious Studies Review
