Restoring Humane Values to Medicine: A Miles Little ReaderDoes reading poetry make you a better clinician?Can euthanasia be understood in terms of the meaning of a life?What is the moral and existential significance of life-threatening experiences? Australian surgeon, poet, philosopher and humanist, Miles Little addresses these and other fascinating questions in this collection of papers.Miles Little is one of the most original and engaging voices in contemporary medical ethics and philosophy. He ranges across the sciences and the humanities, creating hybrid fields of inquiry ("ethonomics"), interrogating orthodoxies and engaging different fields of human knowledge and experience.The papers in this collection were chosen by his readers, who also engage here with Miles Little's work in a short commentary that follows each paper. The range of the commentators reflects the breadth of Little's appeal and influence: academics and clinicians, philosophers and ethicists, novelists, public health practitioners and cancer survivors - each reflects, agrees or disagrees.Like Little's work itself, this Reader is an open and unfolding dialogue that includes many different perspectives.Commentators include: Murray Bail, Robin Downie, Nancy Dubler, Stan Goulston, Jill Gordon, Paul Komesaroff, Steve Leeder, Paul McNeill , Gavin Mooney and Bernadette Tobin |
Contents
| 9 | |
Does reading poetry make you a better clinician? | 45 |
Euthanasia and the meaning of a life | 58 |
Assignments of meaning in Epidemiology | 77 |
Better than numbers | 103 |
Common terms and phrases
accept approach autonomy become believe better body Cambridge cancer clinical clinician complex concept concern construct context continuity death decisions defined discourse discussion disease doctor editors ethics evidence examined example existence experience explanation expressed extreme feel further ground groups human identity illness important individual informed consent interest involved issues Journal kind knowledge language least liminality limits Little Little's lives look meaning medicine Miles moral narrative nature outcome Oxford particular patient person poetry possible practice present principles problems professional question reason References relationship respect response risk salience seek sense social society subjective suffering suggests suicide surgeon surgery surgical survivors theory things treatment trial trust understanding University Press values virtues York