Humanities and medicine (a slightly dissident view)

Programs for humanities and medicine are growing in a number of medical schools in the U.S.A. Proponents of the programs, which are intended to bring together humanists, scientists, physicians, and others, believe that broadening the background of physicians will put a more human face on the practice of medicine, despite its increasingly technological nature. There is little to support this premise, and its successes and failures are not measurable. There are reasons to support the programs, however, but they have more to do with what physicians like and want to do than with what is therapeutic for them.