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7
What Does It Mean to Be an Individual?
The Patient as a Vague Object in Medicine
and Research
Karin Hutflötz
From the moment a human being is called a patient, an individual becomes an object
for medical care or research. Medicine is concerned with his illness transforming it
into a disease, actually not with herself as an individual person suffering in a unique
way and in a non-reccurring situation.
If a person arrives at a hospital for example, or undergoes surgery as a patient,
she has to give up exceedingly the availability of her own time and personal space,
of her privacy and boundaries. Disrobement, different kinds of infantilization, and
the necessity of invading another person's very own space are generally inherent to
the system of medical practice. This explains why Sadegh-Zadeh's Handbook men-
tioned in the first sentence of its Preface the ambivalence of medicine as “a science
and practice of intervention, manipulation and control” 1 , although the ethical rule
of thumb is taking the patients health and his dignity as a priority: “Medicine is not
concerned with illness and disease, but with suffering human beings called patients.
For this reason a theory of the patient ought to constitute its basis.” (§12.2.4)
Objectifying the unique case in order to generalize and model it in a rational
manner, this is the typical western form of the scientific way and medical methods
we favored in our culture and time to increase the domination and possession of
nature, above all the nature of man. But the formal goal of medicine, to intervene
and to control arbitrarily, clashes with the main concern all further advancement in
medicine is dedicated, namely “to develop a philosophy of medicine that will be
tailored to the needs and interests of the patient.” 2
Therefore, the thesis I want to put forward in this paper is that we actually do not
need a (new) “theory of the patient” 3 , but some new tools and fuzzy set models to
1
[5], the first sentence of the preface: “Medicine is a science and practice of intervention,
manipulation and control - concerned with curing ills, caring for ills, preventing maladies
and promoting health.”
2
[5], Preface, p. 3.
3
[5], §12: “However, the subject of medicine is the patient with the ends being directed
toward the relief and prevention of human suffering and saving life.”
Thus, “medicine
needs a theory of the patient first of all.”
 
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