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Updated: Jul 18, 2026
Using Visual and Narrative Methods to Achieve Fair Process in Clinical Care
Published on: February 16, 2011
["Medicine of desire" between commercialization and patient-centeredness]
1Fakultat fur das Studium fundamentale, Private Universitat, Witten-Herdecke, Germany. kettner@uni-wh.de
Definition Of The Problem:
Ample evidence points to an emerging new self-understanding within medical practice, away from the established goals of medicine towards greater responsiveness to individual preferences.
Arguments:
The altered self-understanding of medical practice unfettered by indications grounded in concepts of disease can be conceptually characterized as desire-driven medicine, or "medicine of desire." This raises the question of morally justifiable limits for the normative governance of a medicine of desire.
Conclusion:
In liberal societies, only two forms of argumentation seem promising for setting limits to the provision and consumption of what a medicine of desire has to offer: Arguments that place expected benefit into the perspective of risks, and arguments that probe the coherence of desires and their fulfillment against the background of a person's conception of a good life for that person.
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