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quantify his “needs and interests” in the situation of being a patient. So, this paper
wants to show, why it is not as necessary to have “essential features to characterize
human beings as individuals”
4
, but to know
who
somebody is, rather than what he or
she individually needs in the situation and interaction of medical care and research.
First of all, this paper wants to point out the problem of taking the patient gen-
erally as an object (Part 1), even if it is considered to be a vague object based on
an individual and “fuzzy concept of person” (§12.2.3). The main idea of this paper
- I will give reasons for in Part 2 - is the need for a renewed practice in medicine
traced back to the first person's perspective, instead of a more precise theory of the
concept of ‚person', Sadegh-Zadeh argued for. Finally, I want to give some hints at
the application of fuzzy sets in medical diagnosis and therapy, especially in order to
measure and formalize the patient's degree of illness and needs.
7.1
What Is the Problem of Taking the Patient as an Object in
Medicine and Research?
7.1.1
A Loss of Self-respect and Privacy: Consequences of Being
Treaten as an Object
Before asking “What should we do?” we have to ask “What do we
actually
do?”
In the summary of §12, the chapter about “The patient”, Sadegh-Zadeh points out
what I mentioned above, that “medicine is not concerned with illness and disease,
but with suffering human beings called patients.” Beyond doubt that is a well in-
tentioned approach of a general orientation, in order to enhance the confidence of
the patients and to declare that the physicians do it for the best. But from the mo-
ment a human being changes into the status of being a patient, medicine - due to
its methods - is not concerned with himself (as an individual human being suffering
in an specific way), but with himself reduced on the fact of disease. Thus, he or
she is systematically used to be treated as a more or less dysfunctional object for
diagnostic and therapy. Why that?
4
Accordingly to “the inevitable vagueness of the concept of a person” (§12.2.3), Sadegh-
Zadeh [5] tried to identify the category of persons as a fuzzy set. In respect of this purpose
he exposes an interesting and detailed “description of the person” - referring to the cate-
gories figured out by Eric Cassell [1], p. 36-41 - which includes several aspects as some
essential features to characterize human beings as individuals. What is called personhood
in individuals can be shown as an irreducible but gradually vague term or factor, although
not a crisp property that one definitely has or lacks in sharp measures. Hence, 'person-
hood' is present in human beings to one degree or another. It begins and ceases gradually
and it varies in a single individual at different periods of his life.
The question is, if this draft of a fuzzy concept of person also shows how the suffering
of a patient in fact depends on these aspects, even if they are describable in terms of the
fuzzy set theory. And to what extend the entirety of the individual “as a bio-psycho-social-
agent” (§12.2.) is involved, so why suffering is not mere pain and unwellbeing said to be
objectified as illness or disease.
