Medical humanities: An alliance or an aberration?

In this forum discussion piece, I first delineate the many contours of the label "medical humanities." In readily acknowledging its interdisciplinary makeup, I then attempt to cover two ends of the spectrum as signaled in the title-at one end, a case is made for humanities and medicine as being synergistic and forging an alliance; at the other end lies a fundamental critique that medicine and humanities are incompatible and even an aberration. For the most part, I position myself in the alliance camp. Although the dominant trend is to approach the topic of medical humanities from philosophical, moral, and ethical angles, given my own disciplinary background in communication and discourse studies, the bulk of my discussion relates to the adoption of a communication compass on medical humanities.