A major focus of the philosophy of medicine and, in general, of the philosophy of science has been the interplay of facts and values. Nowhere is an evaluation of this interplay more important than in the ethics of diagnosis. Traditionally, diagnosis has been understood as an epistemological activity which is concerned with facts and excludes the intrusion of values. The essays in this volume challenge this assumption. Questions of knowledge in diagnosis are intimately related to the concerns with intervention that characterize the applied science of medicine. Broad social and individual goals, as well as diverse ethical frameworks, are shown to condition both the processes and results of diagnosis. This has significant implications for bioethics, implications that have not previously been developed. With this volume, `the ethics of diagnosis' is established as an important branch of bioethics.

Inhalt

Editorial Preface. Introduction; H.T. Engelhardt, Jr. I: Historical Perspectives. The Ethics of Diagnosis in Ancient Greek Medicine; P. Laín-Entralgo. The Ethics of Diagnosis in Early Christianity and the Middle Ages; D.G. Guillén. The Ethics of Diagnosis in the Modern and Contemporary Worlds; A. Albarracín. Medical Diagnosis and Institutional Settings; J.L. Peset. Some Conceptual and Methodological Observations on the History of Ethics of Diagnosis; D. Amundsen. Observer Bias: The Emergence of the Ethics of Diagnosis; H.T. Engelhardt, Jr. II: Anthropological and Sociological Interpretations. The Body as a Field of Meaning: Implications for the Ethics of Diagnosis; H.T. Engelhardt, Jr. Embodiment, Pathology, and Diagnosis; J.A. Mainetti. The Experience of Pain and its Clinical Implications; D. Leder. Bodily Integrity, Trust-Telling, and the Good Physician; S.F. Spicker. Anthropology and the Hidden Values in Diagnosis; T.J. Bole III. III: The Socio-Cultural Dimension of Medical Knowledge. The Social Presuppositions of Medical Knowledge; M. Wartofsky. Diagnosing the Eleven-Month Pregnancy: Some Aspects of Moral and Cultural Foundations in Medical Judgment; H.-M. Sass. Non-Epistemic Considerations in Diagnosis: A Case Study of Pap Smears; M.A. Gardell Cutter. IV: Technological Developments in Medical Diagnosis. Value Desiderata in the Logical Structuring of Computer Diagnosis; E.D. Pellegrino. Problems in Computer Diagnosis; K.F. Schaffner. Computer and Clinical Thinking; H.R. Wulff. Critique of Diagnostic Formalism; E. Murphy. Human Values in Computer Diagnosis; E.V. Boisaubin. V: TheEthics of Diagnosis in the Post-Modern World. Post-Modern Reflections on the Ethics of Naming; G. Khushf. Index.