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| Article - Abstract. To view full article click on the article title. | |
CBHD: Medicine’s Intrinsic Good - Teresa Iglesias What is good medicine? Who counts as a good doctor? These are very large questions that cannot be fully addressed here. I want to focus on a basic aspect of these two questions and on the ethical idea of "the good." The term "good medicine," as I have just used it, is not intended to be contrasted with "bad medicine." Rather it is meant to bring to the fore that medicine is something good in itself, a worthwhile and honorable human activity, a "profession" with a specific object of activity, a human good, to which so many men and women devote their lives; an endeavor full of value and capable of fulfilling a person's life with interest, effort and achievement. Medicine is something noble and laudable; both a good and an excellence. This good of medicine is what medicine is about, what it aims at; that which makes medicine to be medicine rather than law, or politics. Let me call this good the medical good. Ethics is concerned with "the good," described by Plato as "the aim of all endeavour."2 His follower, Aristotle, tells us in his Ethics that "every art and every investigation...aims at some good"--and adds--"since there are many actions, arts and sciences, the aims turn out to be many as well; health is the aim of medicine...."3 Since ancient times the particular good with which the medical endeavor is concerned has been focused on one word, "health." Currently, the traditional goals of medicine concerning health may be formulated as follows: To restore the sick patient to health: aiming to cure. Full Article: http://www.cbhd.org/resources/healthcare/iglesias_2003-09-09.htm |
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