Infertility, epistemic risk, and disease definitions.
I explore the role that values and interests, especially ideological interests, play in managing and balancing epistemic risks in medicine. I will focus in particular on how diseases are identified and operationalized. Before we can do biomedical research on a condition, it needs to be identified as...
| Publicado en: | Synthese Vol. 196; no. 11; pp. 4409 - 4429 |
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| Formato: | Artículo |
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Springer Nature
Nov2019
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| Acceso en línea: | Ver este registro en EBSCOhost |
| fields | @attributes: recordID: 1 pdfLink: plink: https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=hlh&AN=139254707&site=ehost-live header: @attributes: shortDbName: hlh uiTerm: 139254707 longDbName: Humanities International Complete uiTag: AN controlInfo: bkinfo: jinfo: jid: 00397857 4LI jtl: Synthese issn: 00397857 maglogo: N pubinfo: dt: Nov2019 vid: 196 iid: 11 pid: 237 pub: Springer Nature artinfo: ui: 139254707 10.1007/s11229-017-1405-0 ppf: 4409 ppct: 20 formats: fmt: – @attributes: type: T – @attributes: type: P size: 435KB tig: atl: Infertility, epistemic risk, and disease definitions. aug: au: Kukla, Rebecca affil: Department of Philosophy, Georgetown University, New North Building, 20057, Washington, DC, USA su: Infertility Social values Definitions Social problems Risk management in business Male infertility Medical research sug: subj: Infertility Social values Definitions Social problems Risk management in business Male infertility Medical research keyword: Disease definition Epistemic risk Inductive risk Values in science ab: I explore the role that values and interests, especially ideological interests, play in managing and balancing epistemic risks in medicine. I will focus in particular on how diseases are identified and operationalized. Before we can do biomedical research on a condition, it needs to be identified as a medical condition, and it needs to be operationalized in a way that lets us identify sufferers, measure progress, and so forth. I will argue that each time we do this, we engage in epistemic risk balancing that inevitably draws upon values and interests, often including social and ideological values. My main interest here is in the conceptualization of infertility as a disease. Infertility is a rich test case for exploring the interplay between interests and epistemic risk management. There is no uncontested or standardized definition of infertility. The various definitions of it are internally ambiguous and tension-ridden, and in spectacular contradiction with one another. Many interest groups who are invested in framing infertility as a pressing problem deserving of social and medical redress are quick to insist that it is a legitimate 'disease,' but they cannot agree on which disease it is, what its symptoms or diagnostic markers are, or even what its basic ontology is. I suggest that there are political explanations for this epistemic mess. Indeed, I contend that there are good scientific and ethical reasons to reduce away the category of 'infertility,' especially understood as a scientific or medical category; I argue that we should excise the concept from our research and clinical practices. pubtype: Academic Journal doctype: Article src: R language: English refInfo: copyright: @attributes: flag: Y custom: Synthese is a copyright of Springer, 2019. All Rights Reserved. item: Synthese holder: Springer Nature dt: @attributes: year: 2019 holdings: @attributes: islocal: N |
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