Deutsche Krankheit: eine Diagnosestellung mit Rückblick und Ausblick auf Krankheitsverlauf.

It seems uncontroversial that Buddhism is therapeutic in intent. The word ‘therapy’ is often used, however, to denote methods of treating medically defined mental illnesses, while in the Buddhist context it refers to the treatment of deep-seated dissatisfaction and confusion that, it is claimed, afflict us all. The Buddha is likened to a doctor who offers a medicine to cure the spiritual ills of the suffering world. In the Pāli scriptures, one of the epithets of the Buddha is ‘the Great (...) Physician’ and the therapeutic regimen or healing treatment is his teaching, theDhamma. This metaphor is continued in later literature, most famously in theSaddharmapuṇḍarīka Sūtra, where the Buddha is said to be like a benevolent doctor who attempts to administer appropriate medicine to his sons. In the Mahāyāna pantheon, one of the most popular of the celestial Buddhas is Bhaiṣajyaguru, the master of healing, who is believed to offer cures for both the spiritual and more mundane ailments of sentient beings. The four truths, possibly the most pervasive of all Buddhist teachings, are expressed in the form of a medical diagnosis. The first truth, that there is suffering (dukkha), is the diagnosis of the disease. The second truth, that suffering arises from a cause (or causes), seeks to identify the root source of the disease. The third truth, that suffering can be ended, is a prognosis that the disease is curable. The fourth truth describes the path to end suffering, and is the prescription of treatment. (shrink)

DISEASE X is the codename given by the World Health Organisation to a pathogen currently unknown to science that could cause havoc to humankind. Emerging infections are sending us multiple warnings that another Disease X is looming. We've had SARS in 2002, H5N1 bird flu in 2004, H1N1 'swine flu' in 2009, MERS in 2012, Ebola in 2014, Zika in 2015 and now COVID-19. These events are not freak events, but are happening continually, and at an increasing cadence. (...) Written by a long-standing ex-Reuters global health and science correspondent, DISEASE X will use privileged access to the body leading international efforts to control viruses, the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI), and its CEO, Dr Richard Hatchett. CEPI seed-funded three successful COVID vaccines, including Astra-Zeneca and Moderna. DISEASE X will explore the emergence of the novel coronavirus and the crisis it caused, analysing the responses of global health organisations and experts, including the WHO, national governments such as Britain, China and the USA, COVAX, the global vaccine allocation facility, pharmaceutical companies, and leading research scientists. Weaving in insights from the likes of Bill Gates, Sir Jeremy Farrar, Dr Anthony Fauci and Sir Patrick Vallance, the book will explain how the world's public health scientists are embarking on a 100 Days Mission to snuff out future threats before they become deadly pandemics. This is the inside story written for the public. (shrink)

‘Twelve Step' recovery programmes such as Alcoholics Anonymous teach that an alcoholic, or other addict, has a disease, and needs to accept that she is ‘powerless' over her addiction before recovery can begin. However, the disease model of addiction has been criticised on the grounds that some addicts recover without external intervention. This critique is questionable, not because such recovery does not occur, but because many genuine diseases are self-limiting. However, the disease model is better criticised on (...) other grounds. Central here is the idea of powerlessness. This article explores various supposed instances of powerlessness, including that induced by extreme fear, provocation and obsessive-compulsive disorder. It is argued that while addiction is a genuine phenomenon, it is strictly inaccurate to describe it as a lack of power. However, there is a deeper sense in which the autonomy of addicts is compromised, although this does not show that addiction is a disease. (shrink)

This paper examines what it is for a condition to be a disease. It falls into two sections. In the first I examine the best existing account of disease (as proposed by Christopher Boorse) and argue that it must be rejected. In the second I outline a more acceptable account of disease. According to this account, by disease we mean a condition that it is a bad thing to have, that is such that we consider the (...) afflicted person to have been unlucky, and that can potentially be medically treated. All three criteria must be fulfilled for a condition to be a disease. The criterion that for a condition to be a disease it must be a bad thing is required to distinguish the biologically different from the diseased. The claim that the sufferer must be unlucky is needed to distinguish diseases from conditions that are unpleasant but normal, for example teething. Finally, the claim that for a condition to be a disease it must be potentially medically treatable is needed to distinguish diseases from other types of misfortune, for example economic problems and legal problems. (shrink)

Rare diseases pose a particular priority setting problem. The UK gives rare diseases special priority in healthcare priority setting. Effectively, the National Health Service is willing to pay much more to gain a quality-adjusted life-year related to a very rare disease than one related to a more common condition. But should rare diseases receive priority in the allocation of scarce healthcare resources? This article develops and evaluates four arguments in favour of such a priority. These pertain to public values, (...) luck egalitarian distributive justice the epistemic difficulties of obtaining knowledge about rare diseases and the incentives created by a higher willingness to pay. The first is at odds with our knowledge regarding popular opinion. The three other arguments may provide a reason to fund rare diseases generously. However, they are either overinclusive because they would also justify funding for many non-rare diseases or underinclusive in the sense of justifying priority for only some rare diseases. The arguments thus fail to provide a justification that tracks rareness as such. There are no data in this work. (shrink)

Neglected diseases are severe conditions that mainly affect the world's poorest people. Those suffering from neglected diseases are mostly suffering from tropical infections that have failed to receive priority in pharmaceutical research and development programs, as well as in public health policies aimed at improving availability and access to preventive, diagnostic and curative medicine. The World Health Organization has issued a number of documents directing attention to the plight affecting one third of the world's population, assisted by active support from (...) private organizations, notably the Bill and Melissa Gates Foundation, but the overall situation remains dismal. In the wake of major socioeconomic processes including globalization, steadily growing economic disparity, healthcare inequality, the instability created by rogue states and terrorism, as well as massive migration, and epidemic outbreaks, the features of neglected diseases have been changing. Neglected populations affected by tropical diseases are suffering increasingly from non-infectious degenerative conditions and disabilities due to untreated chronic maladies. Pockets of poverty and neglect can also be detected in high-income countries, contributing to the emergence of new diseases and the reemergence of infections believed to be disappearing such as tuberculosis and the measles. Included in the issues of neglect are rare diseases, mostly of genetic origin, affecting a small number of patients that suffer from multiple life-shortening functional impairment and organ defects. Effective medicines are extremely expensive, allegedly because research and development of appropriate drugs is resources and time consuming, requiring exorbitant prices to recoup investment from a small number of consumers. Bioethics has been tardy in addressing the suffering and destitution of neglected and rare diseases. Convinced that permanently repeated denunciations blunt the sensitivity towards suffering, whereas statistics are bloodless and unable to elicit commitment, this book attempts to explore a different strategy. In an upstream approach, bioethics needs to engage in ethnographic fieldwork that confronts and shares the context in which people suffer, vividly presenting what epidemiological research has blunted into statistical data. Additionally, a downstream approach is suggested, requiring bioethics to vigorously and openly denounce unethical biomedical and pharmaceutical research, misdeeds in registration and marketing of drugs, and misalignment of policies with the unmet healthcare needs of the destitute. More than being critical observers, bioethicists ought to shed lurking conflicts of interests and seek active participation in planning research and public healthcare practices aimed at improving the lives of medically neglected populations. (shrink)

This article critically interrogates contemporary forms of addiction medicine that are portrayed by policy-makers as providing a ‘rational’ or politically neutral approach to dealing with drug use and related social problems. In particular, it examines the historical origins of the biological facts that are today understood to provide a foundation for contemporary understandings of addiction as a ‘disease of the brain’. Drawing upon classic and contemporary work on ‘styles of thought’, it documents how, in the period between the mid-1960s (...) and the mid-1970s, such facts emerged in relation to new neurobiological styles of explaining and managing social problems associated with drug abuse, and an alliance between a relatively marginal group of researchers and American policy-makers who were launching the ‘War on Drugs’. Beyond illustrating the political and material conditions necessary for the rise of addiction neuroscience, the article highlights the productivity of neurobiological thought styles, by focusing on the new biological objects, treatments and hopes that have emerged within the field of addiction studies over the last several decades. (shrink)

Conceptual analysis of health and disease is portrayed as consisting in the confrontation of a set of criteria—a “definition”—with a set of cases, called instances of either “health” or “ disease.” Apart from logical counter-arguments, there is no other way to refute an opponent’s definition than by providing counter-cases. As resorting to intensional stipulation is not forbidden, several contenders can therefore be deemed to have succeeded. This implies that conceptual analysis alone is not likely to decide between naturalism (...) and normativism. An alternative to this approach would be to examine whether the concept of disease can be naturalized. (shrink)

Rare genetic diseases collectively impact millions of individuals in the United States. These patients and their families share many challenges including delayed diagnosis, lack of knowledgeable providers, and limited economic incentives to develop new therapies for small patient groups. As such, rare disease patients and families often must rely on advocacy, including both self-advocacy to access clinical care and public advocacy to advance research. However, these demands raise serious concerns for equity, as both care and research for a given (...) disease can depend on the education, financial resources, and social capital available to the patients in a given community. In this article, we utilize three case examples to illustrate ethical challenges at the intersection of rare diseases, advocacy and justice, including how reliance on advocacy in rare disease may drive unintended consequences for equity. We conclude with a discussion of opportunities for diverse stakeholders to begin to address these challenges. (shrink)

The concept of disease remains hotly contested. In light of problems with existing accounts, some theorists argue that the disease concept ought to be eliminated. We answer this skeptical challenge by reframing the discussion in terms of the role that the disease concept plays in the complex network of health-care institutions in which it is deployed. We argue that while prevailing accounts do not suffer from the particular defects that critics have identified, they do suffer from other (...) deficits, and this leads us to propose a new account that satisfies the desiderata for a concept of disease in human medicine. (shrink)

Technological developments have resulted in tremendous increases in the volume and diversity of the data and information that must be processed in the course of biomedical and clinical research and practice. Researchers are at the same time under ever greater pressure to share data and to take steps to ensure that data resources are interoperable. The use of ontologies to annotate data has proven successful in supporting these goals and in providing new possibilities for the automated processing of data and (...) information. In this chapter, we describe different types of vocabulary resources and emphasize those features of formal ontologies that make them most useful for computational applications. We describe current uses of ontologies and discuss future goals for ontology-based computing, focusing on its use in the field of infectious diseases. We review the largest and most widely used vocabulary resources relevant to the study of infectious diseases and conclude with a description of the Infectious Disease Ontology (IDO) suite of interoperable ontology modules that together cover the entire infectious disease domain. (shrink)

In this paper I will argue that Aristotelian accounts of disease cannot provide us with an adequate descriptive account of our concept of disease. In other words, they fail to classify conditions as either diseases, or non-diseases, in a way that is consistent with commonplace intuitions. This being said, Aristotelian accounts of disease are not worthless. Aristotelian approaches cannot offer a decent descriptive account of our concept of disease, but they do offer resources for improving on (...) the ways in which we think about the harms that afflict human beings. While they cannot offer an account of ‘disease' they can offer an account of ‘harm'—and this it turns out, is ultimately of greater importance. (shrink)

RECENT PHILOSOPHICAL ATTENTION TO THE LANGUAGE OF DISEASE HAS FOCUSED PRIMARILY ON THE QUESTION OF ITS VALUE-NEUTRALITY OR NON-NEUTRALITY. PROPONENTS OF THE VALUE-NEUTRALITY THESIS SYMBOLICALLY COMBINE POLITICAL AND OTHER CRITICISMS OF MEDICINE IN AN ATTACK ON WHAT THEY SEE AS VALUE-INFECTED USES OF DISEASE LANGUAGE. THE PRESENT ESSAY ARGUES AGAINST TWO THESES ASSOCIATED WITH THIS VIEW: A METHODOLOGICAL THESIS WHICH TENDS TO DIVORCE THE ANALYSIS OF DISEASE LANGUAGE FROM THE CONTEXT OF THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE AND A (...) SUBSTANTIVE THESIS WHICH HOLDS THAT DISEASE LANGUAGE IS EVALUATIVELY NEUTRAL. IN PARTICULAR, THE ESSAY CRITICALLY FOCUSES ON THE VALUE NEUTRAL POSITION ADOPTED BY CHRISTOPHER BOORSE, WHICH HE TERMS A FUNCTIONAL THEORY OF DISEASE. THE ARGUMENT CONCERNS WHETHER OR NOT ONE CAN HAVE VALUE NEUTRAL DESCRIPTION OF DISEASE STATES OR WHETHER DISEASE LANGUAGE ESSENTIALLY INVOLVES VALUES. (shrink)

Debates about the genuine disease status of controversial diseases rely on intuitions about a range of factors. Adopting tools from experimental philosophy, this paper explores some of the factors that influence judgments about whether low sexual desire should be considered a disease and whether it should be medically treated. Drawing in part on some assumptions underpinning a divide in the literature between viewing low sexual desire as a genuine disease and seeing it as improperly medicalized, we investigate (...) whether health and disease judgments are affected by factors such as an individual’s gender, the cause of the low desire, whether the desire is high or low, and both personal and societal valuations of the condition. Our main findings indicate that (a) the cause of a condition influences whether it is judged a disorder, (b) how the individual values the condition influences whether the condition is seen as a proper target of medical intervention, and (c) perceived dysfunction influences judgments regarding health, disorder classification, medicalization, and medical intervention. Our findings help further illuminate the intricate interplay of factors that influence judgments about health and disease in controversial conditions. (shrink)

, Lawrie Reznek argues that disease is not a natural kind term. I raise objections to Reznek's two central arguments for establishing that disease is not a natural kind. In criticizing his a priori, conceptual argument against naturalism, I argue that his conclusion rests on a weaker argument that appeals to the empirical diversity in the symptoms and manifestations of disease. I also raise questions about the account of natural kinds which Reznek utilizes and his point that (...) conventions for classification are excluded by there being natural kinds. Keywords: Disease, natural kind, value judgement CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

Philosophical debates about the concept of disease, particularly of mental disease, might benefit from reconsideration and a closer look at the established terminology and conceptual structure of contemporary medical pathology and clinical nosology. The concepts and principles of medicine differ, to a considerable extent, from the ideas and notions of philosophical theories of disease. In medical theory, the concepts of disease entity and pathologicity are, besides the concept of disease itself, of fundamental importance, and they (...) are essentially connected to the concepts cause of disease or etiological factor, natural course or natural history of disease, and pathological disposition. It is the concept of disease entity that is of key importance for understanding medical pathology and theory of disease. Its central role is shown by a short reconstruction of its main features and its intrinsic connection to the concept of pathologicity. The meaning of pathologicity is elucidated by explicating the underlying criteria. (shrink)

Despite several decades of debate, the concept of disease remains hotly contested. The debate is typically cast as one between naturalism and normativism, with a hybrid view that combines elements of each staked out in between. In light of a number of widely discussed problems with existing accounts, some theorists argue that the concept of disease is beyond repair and thus recommend eliminating it in a wide range of practical medical contexts. Any attempt to reframe the ‘disease’ (...) discussion should answer the more basic sceptical challenge, and should include a meta-methodological critique guided by our pragmatic expectations of what the disease concept ought to do given that medical diagnosis is woven into a complex network of healthcare institutions. In this paper, we attempt such a reframing, arguing that while prevailing accounts do not suffer from the particular defects that prominent critics have identified, they do suffer from other deficits—and this leads us to propose an amended hybrid view that places objectivist approaches to disease on stronger theoretical footing, and satisfies the institutional-ethicaldesiderataof a concept of disease in human medicine. Nevertheless, we do not advocate a procrustean approach to ‘disease’. Instead, we recommend disease concept pluralism between medical and biological sciences to allow the concept to serve the different epistemic and institutional goals of these respective disciplines. (shrink)

Globally, chronic disease and conditions such as diabetes, cardiovascular disease, depression and cancer are the leading causes of morbidity and mortality. Why, then, are public health efforts and programs aimed at preventing chronic disease so difficult to implement and maintain? Also, why is primary care—the key medical specialty for helping persons with chronic disease manage their illnesses—in decline? Public health suffers from its often being socially controversial, personally intrusive, irritating to many powerful corporate interests, and structurally (...) designed to be largely invisible and, as a result, taken for granted. Primary care struggles from low reimbursements, relative to specialists, excessive paperwork and time demands that are unattractive to medical students. Our paper concludes with a discussion of why the need for more aggressive public health and redesigned primary care is great, will grow substantially in the near future, and yet will continue to struggle with funding and public popularity. (shrink)

Theorists analyzing the concept of disease on the basis of the notion of dysfunction consider disease to be dysfunction requiring. More specifically, dysfunction-requiring theories of disease claim that for an individual to be diseased certain biological facts about it must be the case. Disease is not wholly a matter of evaluative attitudes. In this paper, I consider the dysfunction-requiring component of Wakefield’s hybrid account of disease in light of the artifactual organisms envisioned by current research (...) in synthetic biology. In particular, I argue that the possibility of artifactual organisms and the case of oncomice and other bred or genetically modified strains of organism constitute a significant objection to Wakefield’s etiological account of the dysfunction requirement. I then develop a new alternative understanding of the dysfunction requirement that builds on the organizational theory of function. I conclude that my suggestion is superior to Wakefield’s theory because it (a) can accommodate both artifactual and naturally evolved organisms, (b) avoids the possibility of there being a conflict between what an organismic part is supposed to do and the health of the organism, and (c) provides a nonarbitrary and practical way of determining whether dysfunction occurs. (shrink)

Health, Disease, and Illness brings together a sterling list of classic and contemporary thinkers to examine the history, state, and future of ever-changing "concepts" in medicine.

Recently, concerns have been raised about the phenomenon of ‘overdiagnosis’, the diagnosis of a condition that is not causing harm, and will not come to cause harm. Along with practical, ethical, and scientific questions, overdiagnosis raises questions about our concept of disease. In this paper, we analyse overdiagnosis as an epistemic problem and show how it challenges many existing accounts of disease. In particular, it raises ques- tions about conceptual links drawn between disease and dysfunction, harm, and (...) risk. We argue that ‘disease’ should be considered a vague concept with a non-classical structure. On this view, overdiagnosed cases are ‘borderline’ cases of disease, falling in the zone between cases that are clearly disease, and cases that are clearly not disease. We then develop a pre ́cising definition of disease designed to provide practical help in preventing and limiting overdiagnosis. We argue that for this purpose, we can define disease as dysfunction that has a significant risk of causing severe harm to the patient. (shrink)

In the contemporary biomedical literature, every disease is considered genetic. This extension of the concept of genetic disease is usually interpreted either in a trivial or genocentrist sense, but it is never taken seriously as the expression of a genetic theory of disease. However, a group of French researchers defend the idea of a genetic theory of infectious diseases. By identifying four common genetic mechanisms (Mendelian predisposition to multiple infections, Mendelian predisposition to one infection, and major gene (...) and polygenic predispositions), they attempt to unify infectious diseases from a genetic point of view. In this article, I analyze this explicit example of a genetic theory, which relies on mechanisms and is applied only to a specific category of diseases, what we call “a regional genetic theory.” I have three aims: to prove that a genetic theory of disease can be devoid of genocentrism, to consider the possibility of a genetic theory applied to every disease, and to introduce two hypotheses about the form that such a genetic theory could take by distinguishing between a genetic theory of diseases and a genetic theory of Disease. Finally, I suggest that network medicine could be an interesting framework for a genetic theory of Disease. (shrink)

Paul Griffiths and John Matthewson argue that selected effects play the key role in determining whether a state is pathological. In response, it is argued that a selected effects account faces a number of difficulties in light of modern genomic research. Firstly, a modern history approach to selection is problematic as a basis for assigning function to human traits in light of the small population sizes in the hominin lineage, which imply that selection has played a limited role in shaping (...) these genomes in the evolutionarily recent past. Secondly, determining both the genetic basis of disease and selective histories of the various alleles involved may be experimentally intractable. Thirdly, the existence of “selected disorders” is well supported, and yet on the other hand many other common diseases may not reduce evolutionary fitness. In summary, the biological ends promoted by natural selection, as best modeled in recent research, do not adequately ground a concept of dysfunction that aligns well with the interests of human health. (shrink)

The philosophy of medicine and psychiatry has considered the defining of disease, illness, and disorder an important project for over three decades. Within this literature, accounts based on adaptive "functions" have been prominent, particularly in the DSM nosology. In response to this trend, Jerome Wakefield has presented a view of mental disorder as "harmful dysfunction." In this view, "harm" contributes the value-element to disorder concepts, while "dysfunction" implies a value-free foundation as long as the latter is grounded in evolutionary (...) biology. In a critical review of Wakefield's and others' functionalist arguments for disorder concepts, we make four major points. We recommend a shift away from the definition of value-free disorder concepts, instead emphasizing the analysis of the logical features and the value commitments in nosological categories. (shrink)

Terminally ill patients in 10 states plus Washington, D.C. have the right to take prescribed medications to end their lives (medical aid in dying). But otherwise-eligible patients with neuromuscular disabilities (ALS and other illnesses) are excluded if they are physically unable to “self-administer” the medications without assistance. This exclusion is incompatible with disability rights laws that mandate assistance to provide equal access to health care. This contradiction between aid-in-dying laws and disability rights laws can force patients and clinicians into violating (...) one or the other, potentially creating an underclass of patients denied medical care that is available to those with other (less physically disabling) terminal illnesses. The immediacy of this issue is demonstrated by a lawsuit in Federal court filed in August 2021, requesting assistance in self-administration for terminally ill patients with neuromuscular diseases. This paper discusses the background of this conflict, the ethical issues at the heart of the dilemma, and recommends potential remedies. (shrink)

코로나 전염병에 관한 담론을 주제로 한 본 연구는 이중적 목적을 갖고 있다. 첫째 방역정책에 있어 개인의 행동에 초점을 두는 미시적 담론에서 가장 논란이 되는 “신체주권(bodily Sovereignty)”이란 개념을 전염병 현실과 관련하여 분석한다. 이 개념의 원조인 J.S. 밀의 저작에서 신체주권이 무엇을 의미하는지 파악하고, 이를 코로나 현실 상황에 적용하여 신체주권에 기반한 주장의 타당성을 검토한다. 둘째 이렇게 미시적으로 분석된 내용을 사회-정치체계의 장기적 방향을 논의하는 거시적 담론과 연결시켜 논쟁의 향방을 ‘가늠’해보려고 시도한다. 아감벤과 지젝이 서로 대척점에 선거시논쟁에서 본 연구는 미시담론적 분석이 지젝쪽의 주장에 좀 더 무게를 (...) 실어주지 않나 어림잡아 본다. 미시와 거시라는 두 수준에서 각기 분석하여 연결을 이와 같이 시도하는 것은 코로나 전염병에 관한 담론의 전반적 구도를 드러내어 이 주제에 관한 향후 논의에 담론적 개요를 제공할 수 있기를 기대하기 때문이다. (shrink)

Social Constructivism about the disease concept has generally been taken to ignore the fundamental biological reality underlying diseases, as well as to fall foul of several apparently compelling objections. In this paper, I explain how the metaphysical relation of grounding can be used to tie a socially constructed account of diseases and their classification to their underlying biological and behavioural states. I then generalize the position by disambiguating several varieties of normativism, including a particularly strong ‘placeholder’ version of social (...) constructivism, and showing that the grounding approach is available to each. I go on to provide what I believe to be the first attempt at a full semantics for disease-talk and disagreement, before using the placeholder to demonstrate on that basis that the most troublesome objections to normativism can be avoided even by very strong versions of the position. (shrink)

There is a flood of papers being published on new ways to diagnose Alzheimer disease before it is symptomatic, involving a combination of invasive tests , and pen and paper tests. This changes the landscape with respect to genetic tests for risk of AD, making rational suicide a much more feasible option. Before the availability of these presymptomatic tests, even someone with a high risk of developing AD could not know if and when the disease was approaching. One (...) could lose years of good life by committing suicide too soon, or risk waiting until it was too late and dementia had already sapped one of the ability to form and carry out a plan. One can now put together what one knows about one's risk, with continuing surveillance via these clinical tests, and have a good strategy for planning one's suicide before one becomes demented. This has implications for how these genetic and clinical tests are marketed and deployed, and the language one uses to speak about them. The phrase ‘there is nothing one can do’ is insulting and disrespectful of the planned suicide option, as is the language of the Risk Evaluation and Education for Alzheimer's Disease studies and others that conclude that it is ‘safe’ to tell subjects their risk status for AD. Further, the argument put forward by some researchers that presymptomatic testing should remain within research protocols, and the results not shared with subjects until such time as treatments become available, disrespects the autonomy of people at high risk who consider suicide an option. (shrink)

This chapter relates the problem of demarcating the pathological from the non-pathological in psychiatry to the general problem of defining ‘disease’ in the philosophy of medicine. Section 2 revisits three prominent debates in medical nosology: naturalism versus normativism, the three dimensions of illness, sickness, and disease, and the demarcation problem. Sections 3–5 reformulate the demarcation problem in terms of semantic vagueness. ‘Disease’ exhibits vagueness of degree by drawing no sharp line in a continuum and is combinatorially vague (...) because there are several criteria for the term’s use that might fall apart. Combinatorial vagueness explains why the other two debates appear hopeless: Should we construe ‘disease’ in a naturalistic or in a normative way? Neither answer is satisfactory. How should we balance the three dimensions of pathology? We do not have to, because illness, sickness and disease (narrowly conceived) are non-competing criteria for the application of the cluster term ‘disease’. (shrink)

It is argued that alcoholism, and substance addiction generally, is a disease. It is not of its nature chronic or progressive, although it is in serious cases. It is better viewed as a psychological disease than a neurological one. It is argued that each time an alcoholic takes a drink, this is the result of choice; however, in cases of serious affliction, such choices are compulsive and may be called 'involuntary' in that they are made against the subject's (...) will, motivated by an overwhelmingly powerful desire that he wishes he did not have and not to act on. Alternative accounts in terms social learning theory and behavioral economics are critiqued. The conception of alcoholism as a tripartite disease composed of a 'physical allergy,' a mental obsession, and a 'spiritual malady' is defended from a contemporary scientific point of view. (shrink)

Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) provides an excellent case study to investigate emerging conceptions of health, disease, pre-disease, and risk. Two scientific working groups have recently reconceptualized AD and created a new category of asymptomatic biomarker positive persons, who are either said to have preclinical AD, or to be at risk for AD. This article examines how prominent theories of health and disease would classify this condition: healthy or diseased? Next, the notion of being “at risk”—a state somewhere (...) in-between health and disease—is considered from various angles. It is concluded that medical-scientific developments urge us to let go of dichotomous ways of understanding disease, that the notion of “risk,” conceptualized as an increased chance of getting a symptomatic disease, might be a useful addition to our conceptual framework, and that we should pay more attention to the practical usefulness and implications of the ways in which we draw lines and define concepts. (shrink)

Our goal in this paper is to articulate a precise concept of at least a certain kind of disease-mongering, showing how pharmaceutical marketing can commercially exploit certain diseases when their best definition is given through the success of a treatment in a clinical trial. We distinguish two types of disease-mongering according to the way they exploit the definition of the trial population for marketing purposes. We argue that behind these two forms of disease-mongering there are two well-known (...) problems in the statistical methodology of clinical trials (the reference class problem and the distinction between statistical and clinical significance). Overcoming them is far from simple. (shrink)

Recently, concerns have been raised about the phenomenon of 'overdiagnosis', the diagnosis of a condition that is not causing harm, and will not come to cause harm. Along with practical, ethical, and scientific questions, overdiagnosis raises questions about our concept of disease. In this paper, we analyse overdiagnosis as an epistemic problem and show how it challenges many existing accounts of disease. In particular, it raises questions about conceptual links drawn between disease and dysfunction, harm, and risk. (...) We argue that "disease" should be considered a vague concept with a nonclassical structure. On this view, overdiagnosed cases are 'borderline' cases of disease, falling in the zone between cases that are clearly disease, and cases that are clearly not disease. We then develop a précising definition of disease designed to provide practical help in preventing and limiting overdiagnosis. We argue that for this purpose, we can define disease as dysfunction that has a significant risk of causing severe harm to the patient. (shrink)

This paper gives a self-defence account of the scope and limits of the justified use of compulsion to control contagious disease. It applies an individualistic model of self-defence for state action and uses it to illuminate the constraints on public health compulsion of proportionality and using the least restrictive alternative. It next shows how a self-defence account should not be rejected on the basis of past abuses. The paper then considers two possible limits to a self-defence justification: compulsion of (...) the non-culpable and over-inclusive compulsion. The paper claims that objections to compelling the non-culpable do not greatly restrict the scope of the self-defence justification. The over-included are, however, innocent bystanders, and methods such as compulsory quarantine, vaccination, and screening are not justified in self-defence. (shrink)

Response to commentary. We are grateful to Crockett and Craigie for their interesting remarks on our paper. We accept Crockett’s claim that there is a need for caution in drawing inferences about patient groups from work on healthy volunteers in the laboratory. However, we believe that the evidence we cited established a strong presumption that many of the patients who are routinely taking a medication, including many people properly prescribed the medication for a medical condition, have morally significant aspects of (...) their cognition and behavior modified in a way that is unintended and may sometimes be unwelcome. Crockett notes that in some cases the effects of long-term drug use may differ, sometimes markedly, from the effects of short-term use. However, if acute use of a drug affects a neural system involved in mediating moral cognition or behavior, this nevertheless provides some evidence that chronic use of the drug may affect that same system and thus have morally significant effects. It is also plausible, in some cases, that an acute moral effect would give rise to a chronic moral effect via cognitive mechanisms. ... (shrink)

Disease prioritarianism is a principle that is often implicitly or explicitly employed in the realm of healthcare prioritization. This principle states that the healthcare system ought to prioritize the treatment of disease before any other problem. This article argues that disease prioritarianism ought to be rejected. Instead, we should adopt ‘the problem-oriented heuristic’ when making prioritizations in the healthcare system. According to this idea, we ought to focus on specific problems and whether or not it is possible (...) and efficient to address them with medical means. This has radical implications for the extension of the healthcare system. First, getting rid of the binary disease/no-disease dichotomy implicit in disease prioritarianism would improve the ability of the healthcare system to address chronic conditions and disabilities that often defy easy classification. Second, the problem-oriented heuristic could empower medical practitioners to address social problems without the need to pathologize these conditions. Third, the problem-oriented heuristic clearly states that what we choose to treat is a normative consideration. Under this assumption, we can engage in a discussion on de-medicalization without distorting preconceptions. Fourth, this pragmatic and de-compartmentalizing approach should allow us to reconsider the term ‘efficiency’. (shrink)

Recent philosophical attention to the language of disease has focused primarily on the question of its value-neutrality or non-neutrality. Proponents of the value-neutrality thesis symbolically combine political and other criticisms of medicine in an attack on what they see as value-infected uses of disease language. The present essay argues against two theses associated with this view: a methodological thesis which tends to divorce the analysis of disease language from the context of the practice of medicine and a (...) substantive thesis which holds that disease language is evaluatively neutral. In particular, the essay critically focuses on the value neutral position adopted by Christopher Boorse, which he terms a functional theory of disease. The argument concerns whether or not one can have value neutral description of disease states or whether disease language essentially involves values. (shrink)

The paper develops and addresses a major challenge for therapeutic conceptions of philosophy of the sort increasingly attributed to Wittgenstein. To be substantive and relevant, such conceptions have to identify “diseases of the understanding” from which philosophers suffer, and to explain why these “diseases” need to be cured in order to resolve or overcome important philosophical problems. The paper addresses this challenge in three steps: With the help of findings and concepts from cognitive linguistics and cognitive psychology, it redevelops the (...) Wittgensteinian notion of “philosophical pictures.” Through a case study on seminal versions of familiar mind-body problems, it examines how such pictures shape philosophical reflection and generate ill-motivated but captivating problems. Third, it shows that philosophical pictures are constitutive of “diseases of the understanding,” in a quite strict sense of the term. On this basis, the paper explains when and why philosophical therapy is required. (shrink)

The COVID-19 pandemic invites a question about how long-standing narratives of alterity and current narratives of disease are entwined and re-enacted in the diagnosis of COVID-19. In this commentary, we discuss two related phenomena that, we argue, should be taken into account in answering this question. First, we address the diffusion of pseudoscientific accounts of minorities’ immunity to COVID-19. While apparently praising minorities’ biological resistance, such accounts rhetorically introduce a distinction between “Us” and “Them,” and in so doing produce (...) new and re-enact old narratives of alterity. Second, these unsubstantiated narratives thrive on fake news and scarcity of data. The second part of this commentary thus surveys the methods through which the COVID-19 test is administered in various countries. We argue that techniques used for data collection have a major role in producing COVID-19 data that render contagion rates among migrants and other minorities invisible. In the conclusion, we provide two recommendations about how COVID-19 data can instead potentially work towards inclusion. (shrink)

Coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic is continuing to have severe effects on tourism-related industries, as safety precautions have become essential to follow. Based on this, this study aims to explore the role of perceptions of the tourist of safety in tourism destination choice with the mediating effect of tourist trust in the context of the Chinese tourism sector. In addition, this study considers improvements to safety measures for sustainable tourism and the benefits of the technology transformation in the travel industry (...) because of COVID-19. For this study, a quantitative approach was used, and data were collected through convenient sampling. The questionnaire was measured on a 5-point Likert scale, and a cross-sectional approach was adopted for data analysis. The findings of this study show that the effect of the perceived safety of the social environment, perceived safety of facility and equipment elements, perceived safety of human elements, perceived safety of management elements, and perceived safety of natural environments is significant and positive on the tourist destination choice. In addition, TT is a significant mediator between these elements and TDC. Furthermore, this study concluded that COVID-19 had increased travel anxiety, with particularly negative effects on the Chinese tourism sector, but that the adoption of perceived safety measures could be beneficial in regaining TT for traveling, eventually giving tourists confidence in choosing their traveling destination. (shrink)

A great number of constructive suggestions for the analysis of the concepts and models treated are presented in this book, which mirrors a current debate within the theory of medicine by covering three central topics: the concepts of health and disease; definition and classification in medicine; and causal explanation in medicine. Among the issues dealt with are: How should the concepts of health and disease be characterized in order to be of relevance to clinical practice? Should we try (...) to define particular diseases in explicit terms? What should be the criteria for selecting causes when explaining disease or death? These problems are treated from various points of view, the contributors being drawn from the fields of clinical medicine, epidemiology, psychiatry, social medicine, philosophy, and history of medicine. (shrink)

In line with recent proposals for experimental philosophy and philosophy of science in practice, we propose that the philosophy of medicine could benefit from incorporating empirical research, just as bioethics has. In this paper, we therefore take first steps towards the development of an empirical philosophy of medicine, that includes investigating practical and moral dimensions. This qualitative study gives insight into the views and experiences of a group of various medical professionals and patient representatives regarding the conceptualization of health and (...) disease concepts in practice and the possible problems that surround them. This includes clinical, epistemological, and ethical issues. We have conducted qualitative interviews with a broad range of participants (n = 17), working in various health-related disciplines, fields and organizations. From the interviews, we highlight several different practical functions of definitions of health and disease. Furthermore, we discuss 5 types of problematic situations that emerged from the interviews and analyze the underlying conceptual issues. By providing theoretical frameworks and conceptual tools, and by suggesting conceptual changes or adaptations, philosophers might be able to help solve some of these problems. This empirical-philosophical study contributes to a more pragmatic way of understanding the relevance of conceptualizing health and disease by connecting the participants’ views and experiences to the theoretical debate. Going back and forth between theory and practice will likely result in a more complex but hopefully also better and more fruitful understanding of health and disease concepts. (shrink)

The Neurological Disease Ontology (ND) is being developed to provide a comprehensive framework for the representation of neurological diseases (Diehl et al., 2013). ND utilizes the model established by the Ontology for General Medical Science (OGMS) for the representation of entities in medicine and disease (Scheuermann et al., 2009). The goal of ND is to include information for each disease concerning its molecular, genetic, and environmental origins, the processes involved in its etiology and realization, as well as (...) its clinical presentation including signs and symptoms. (shrink)

"This is a wonderful book! In "How Scientists Explain Disease," Paul Thagard offers us a delightful essay combining science, its history, philosophy, and sociology.

Cardiovascular disease (CVD) and sustained high blood glucose as prediabetes are an established comorbidity. People's experience in reconciling these long‐term conditions requires deeper appreciation if nurses are to more effectively support person‐centred care for people who have them. Our analysis explores the initial experience of people admitted to hospital with CVD who then find they also have sustained high blood glucose. Our methodology is informed by the philosophy of Gadamer and applies interpretive description to develop an interpretation of participant (...) experiences. The major theme emerging from participant interviews was the ‘invisible disequilibrium’ characterised by three subthemes: ‘losing equilibrium’, ‘becoming embattled’ and ‘evolving illness’. This study examines CVD and prediabetes in conjunction with the Gadamerian notion of the ‘whole’, as being in a social and emotional world in which illness is also a component part. We explore how participants lived within an ‘invisible disequilibrium’, with prediabetes frequently remaining unnoticed, while CVD was manifest. To identify multiple conditions and support effective intervention to manage them as part of person‐centric care, nursing practice should explore the ‘whole’ of the person's experience, value people’s knowledge as potential indicators of complex illness, thereby reducing the risk of accelerating complex illness. (shrink)

In a recent article in this journal, Zachary Ardern criticizes our view that the most promising candidate for a naturalized criterion of disease is the "selected effects" account of biological function and dysfunction. Here we reply to Ardern’s criticisms and, more generally, clarify the relationship between adaptation and dysfunction in the evolution of health and disease.