On Dis-ease :: essays research papers

<a href="http//www.geocities.com/vaksam/">Sam Vaknins Psychology, Philosophy, Economics and Foreign Affairs tissue SitesWe are all terminally ill. It is a matter of time before we all die. Aging and death remain almost as sable as ever so. We feel awed and uncomfortable when we contemplate these twin afflictions. Indeed, the real word denoting illness contains its own best definition dis-ease. A psychogenic component of lack of well being must exist SUBJECTIVELY. The somebody must FEEL bad, must welcome discomfiture for his condition to specialize as a disease. To this extent, we are justified in classifying all dieases " phantasmal" or " moral". Is there any new(prenominal) way of distinguishing wellness from sickness - a way that does NOT depend on the stem tha the patient provides regarding his subjective experience? Some diseases are manifest and others are latent or immanent. Genetic diseases can exist - unmanifested - for generations. Thi s raises the philosophical fuss or whether a potential disease IS a disease? ar AIDS and Hemophilia carriers - sick? Should they be treated, ethically speaking? They experience no dis-ease, they report no symptoms, no signs are evident. On what lesson grounds can we commit them to treatment? On the grounds of the "greater benefit" is the common response. Carriers threaten others and must be isolated or otherwise neutered. The threat inherent in them must be eradicated. This is a dangerous moral precedent. All kinds of people threaten our well-being unsettling ideologists, the mentally handicapped, many politicians. Why should we single out our physical well-being as worthy of a privileged moral status? Why is our mental well being, for instance, of less import? Moreover, the distinction between the psychic and the physical is hotly disputed, philosophically. The psychophysical problem is as intractable today as it ever was (if not more so). It is beyond doubt that the ph ysical affects the mental and the other way around. This is what disciplines like psychiatry are all about. The ability to restrict "autonomous" bodily functions (such(prenominal) as heartbeat) and mental reactions to pathogenes of the brain are create of the artificialness of this distinction. It is a result of the reductionist view of nature as severable and summable. The sum of the parts, alas, is not always the whole and there is no such thing as an infinite set of the rules of nature, only an asymptotic estimation of it. The distinction between the patient and the outside world is superfluous and wrong.