title: Organism as the purpose of medicine.
abstract: The purpose of medical activities receives variegated interpretations that affect ethical and metamedical issues. Preservation of health and removal of disease are not acceptable goals of medicine, for they have such strong social components, that medicine would be more at the service of society than of the individual. Preservation of life is conceptually too diffuse a task to be useful, apart from the fact that talk about preserving life can lead to contradictions with the actual realities and necessities of living beings. Medicine cannot be restricted to healing the body, for the human body is a purposeless machine that only gains goals and values through subjectivity. Equally inadequate is the characterisation of medicine as caring for the person, because person is a controversially defined description that would render many humans outcasts. Only the organism, defined as body with subjectivity, is a purposeful living unit that can enroll medical efforts to serve its needs and help pursue its teleology.
mesh_terms: D004194:Disease; D006262:Health; D006801:Humans; D010686:Philosophy, Medical