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PHIL611 Philosophy of Medicine

10 cp
Prerequisites
: PHIL601 Research and Critical Thinking
Teaching Organisation: This unit involves 150 hours of focused learning. The total includes formally structured learning activities such as lectures, tutorials, online learning, video-conferencing or supervision. The remaining hours typically involve reading, research, and the preparation of tasks for assessment.

This unit considers the epistemological and metaphysical questions which arise when medicine and its branches are thought of as science. The claims of so-called evidence-based medicine as an improvement on traditional medical methods of differential selection of therapeutic intervention and the claims of so-called “alternative medicines”, in both diagnostics and therapeutics, are examined. Ethical questions arise when metaphysical and epistemological claims are made by medical science about human nature and the treatment of illness and these will be discussed. In addition, there are ethical issues involved in the consideration of the credibility of knowledge claims or claims to scientificity of medicine, its branches and its alternatives.

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Units 2012