["Medicine of desire" between commercialization and patient-centeredness].
OBJECTIVE
Ample evidence points to an emerging new self-understanding within medical practice, away from the established goals of medicine towards greater responsiveness to individual preferences.


OBJECTIVE
The altered self-understanding of medical practice unfettered by indications grounded in concepts of disease can be conceptually characterized as desire-driven medicine, or "medicine of desire." This raises the question of morally justifiable limits for the normative governance of a medicine of desire.


CONCLUSIONS
In liberal societies, only two forms of argumentation seem promising for setting limits to the provision and consumption of what a medicine of desire has to offer: Arguments that place expected benefit into the perspective of risks, and arguments that probe the coherence of desires and their fulfillment against the background of a person's conception of a good life for that person.
Kettner
Matthias
M
Fakultat fur das Studium fundamentale, Private Universitat, Witten-Herdecke, Germany. kettner@uni-wh.de
D001294:Attitude to Health; D024803:Biomedical Enhancement / Q000941:ethics*; D003132:Commerce; D000529:Complementary Therapies; D006040:Goals; D006801:Humans; D008019:Life Style; D008511:Medicine / Q000639:trends*; D026706:Paternalism; D027724:Reproductive Techniques, Assisted; D018570:Risk Assessment; D013518:Surgery, Plastic