An argument that health is optimal responsiveness and is often best treated at the system level. Medical education centers on the venerable “no-fault” concept of homeostasis, whereby local mechanisms impose constancy by correcting errors, and the brain serves mainly for emergencies. Yet, it turns out that most parameters are not constant; moreover, despite the importance of local mechanism…
An examination of the ethical issues raised by the possibility of human life extension, including its desirability, unequal access, and the threat of overpopulation.OCLC-licensed vendor bibliographic record.
While human capital is a clear determinant of economic growth, only recently has health's role in this process become a focus of serious academic inquiry. By marrying the separate fields of health economics and growth theory, this groundbreaking book explores the explicit mechanisms by which a population's individual and collective health status affects a nation's economic development and perfo…
Title from PDF title page (viewed on Oct. 11, 2012)."'Human dignity' has been enshrined in international agreements and national constitutions as a fundamental human right. The World Medical Association calls on physicians to respect human dignity and to discharge their duties with dignity. And yet human dignity is a term--like love, hope, and justice--that is intuitively grasped but never clea…
Economist Frank Sloan and lawyer Lindsey Chepke examine the U.S. medical malpractice process from legal, medical, economic & insurance perspectives, analyse past efforts at reform, & offer policy recommendations.
How the meaningless process of natural selection produces purposeful beings who find meaning in the world. In From Darwin to Derrida, evolutionary biologist David Haig explains how a physical world of matter in motion gave rise to a living world of purpose and meaning. Natural selection, a process without purpose, gives rise to purposeful beings who find meaning in the world. The key to this…
A concise introduction to fundamental methods for finding and extracting relevant information from the ever-increasing amounts of biomedical text available.
A solutions-oriented examination of the connections between environmental degradation and human health.Life Support brings together the best medical information available on the implications for human health of the global environmental crisis. Written by prominent physicians and public health experts who see environmental degradation as a serious threat to public health, it provides essential i…
How eliminating "risk illiteracy" among doctors and patients will lead to better health care decision making.OCLC-licensed vendor bibliographic record.
A physician/philosopher uses anecdotes, historical narrative, and philosophical concepts to draw a moral portrait of the doctor-patient relationship."My mission is to analyze medicines ethical structure. I do so as both a physician and a philosopher. Of my two voices, it is the latter that is informed by the former ... As a physician I have sought professional solutions to the frustrations of f…