Revija za sociologiju, Vol. 34 No. 3-4, 2003.
Pregledni rad
Modern Medicine Remains the mere "Science of the Body" or "Science of Disease"
Živka Staničić
Sažetak
In contrast to the universally accepted and comprehensible view defining the status of “allowable problem” and/or one subject area and/or thesis that the key objective of modern medicine is exclusively disease, this paper is based on the fundamental premise that the key set of concepts in medicine is health and disease. Both the concepts are being explained not separately but as an inseparable unity, which in turn “opens multiple and fertile ways” to medical research and medical activities. This is followed by a critical review of the two most frequently applied strategies which modern medicine adopts in trying to justify its exclusive focus on disease: defining health as an “abstract”, “elusive” and “metaphysical” notion, which should be dealt with exclusively by philosophers and theologians, and defining health as the condition in complete antithesis to disease, as something “beyond” disease. Applying Husserl’s theoretical key premise that the “real” crisis of a science starts only when the “complete way in which its objective has been set up and its methodological approach adopted” becomes questionable, this paper tries to prove, presenting well-founded arguments, that scientific medicine is facing a “real” crisis (in spite of its continuous and spectacular breakthroughs). This crisis is due to the fact that not only the way in which it has defined its mission (curing all the diseases) has become controversial, but also because the methods of realizing this task have become questionable (exclusively within the scope of scientific paradigm that created illusion about the specific etiology of each single disease. The developments and major breakthroughs in molecular biology have resulted in a new standpoint that the newly discovered gene, its presence or absence, causes a specific disease).
Ključne riječi
KEY SET OF CONCEPTS IN MEDICINE – HEALTH AND DISEASE; CRISIS OF MEDICAL SCIENCE; MEDICAL DIAGNOSES; NON-MEDICAL DIAGNOSES; “PROFITABILITY” OF MEDICINE
Hrčak ID:
14500
URI
Datum izdavanja:
31.12.2003.
Posjeta: 2.271 *