Debate: Rethinking the goals of medicine

There was a time when doctors were called doctors and patients were called patients.  Then biomedical science, technology and enterprises appeared on the scene, soon followed by administrators, bureaucrats, lawyers, and philosophers with their notions of autonomy and self-determination. And patients became clients, doctors service providers, and hospitals supermarkets.

There was a time when patients had broken bodies and doctors fixed them. Later, a day came when patients had no broken bodies but doctors fixed them anyway. But by then, they were not patients and doctors anymore; or were they?

The aim of this workshop is to analyze the influence that some new developments in medical science have in the ways we think about the purposes or goals of medicine and health care.We will focus on three different areas of medical expertise, the developments of which have greatly contributed, albeit in distinct ways, to the present debate: Cosmetic Plastic Surgery, In Vitro Fertilization and Preventive Genetic Testing.

Professor Marian Verkerk will give a short and general introduction to the ethical questions involved in the present debate, such as those which affect the way health care professionals see themselves as a professional category with specific professional responsibilities.

Her intervention will be followed by a three expert panel, consisting of a Plastic Surgeon, an expert in Clinical Genetics, and an expert in In Vitro Fertilization. They will present their views on how they see their professional responsibilities affected by their field of work and also by the public demand that their services be available to patients on patient’s demand - Are we doing medicine in what we are doing?  A guided discussion with all attending participants will follow the experts’ intervention.