Learning from disability studies to introduce the role of the individual to naturalistic accounts of disease

verfasst von

Ozan Altan Altinok

Abstract

Disability studies have been successfully focusing on individuals' lived experiences, the personalization of goals, and the constitution of the individual in defining disease and restructuring public understandings of disability. Although they had a strong influence in the policy making and medical modeling of disease, their framework has not been translated to traditional naturalistic accounts of disease. I will argue that, using new developments in evolutionary biology (Extended Evolutionary Synthesis [EES] about questions of proper function) and behavioral ecology (Niche conformance and construction about the questions of reference classes in biostatistics accounts), the main elements of the framework of disability studies can be used to represent life histories at the conceptual level of the two main “non-normative” accounts of disease. I chose these accounts since they are related to medicine in a more descriptive way. The success of the practical aspects of disability studies this way will be communicated without causing injustice to the individual since they will represent the individuality of the patient in two main naturalistic accounts of disease: the biostatistical account and the evolutionary functional account. Although most accounts criticizing the concept of disease as value-laden do not supply a positive element, disability studies can supply a good point for descriptive extension of the concept through inclusion of epistemic agency.

Organisationseinheit(en)

Centre for Ethics and Law in the Life Sciences

Typ

Artikel

Journal

Medicine, Health Care and Philosophy

Band

27

Seiten

407-417

Anzahl der Seiten

11

ISSN

1386-7423

Publikationsdatum

09.2024

Publikationsstatus

Veröffentlicht

Peer-reviewed

Ja

ASJC Scopus Sachgebiete

Gesundheit (Sozialwissenschaften), Ausbildung bzw. Denomination, Philosophie, Health policy

Ziele für nachhaltige Entwicklung

SDG 3 – Gute Gesundheit und Wohlergehen

Elektronische Version(en)

https://doi.org/10.1007/s11019-024-10216-9 (Zugang: Offen)