Abstract

The medicalization of risk rests on foundational assumptions shared by economics and public health. Economists, however, think in terms of pursuing an array of goods, and hence, they offer useful critiques of the irrationality involved in trying to subordinate all goods to one narrow good, like avoiding death from a particular disease. Many of our approaches to health do not appear to be fully rational, suggesting that the deeper motivation lying behind our concerns about health are to be found in something other than the impulse to extend human lives as much as possible. This paper draws on the theology of St. Thomas Aquinas to sketch a richer way of thinking about the goods we pursue in health care that can help us to avoid the pitfalls associated with the medicalization of risk.