Medical Anthropology as Baste Discipline for the Teaching of Bioethics

Abstract:

Bioethics is concemed with the values embedded in biomedkal practices, deliberating and assigning these values according to the requirements of strict scholarly reflechon. Ethical thought is basically prescriptive, requiring a previous analysis based on the description and specifications of the values involved. It is suggested in this paper that medical anthropology can act as a propedeutic discipline, capable of recognizing the essential human attributes and experiences of vulnerability and disease-proneness. When an individual becomes ill, he suffers both damage to the living body and to the lived body, for disease threatens function as well as existential being. Seeking therapeutic assistance means that suffering disease is accompanied by the hope of recovery, thus setting the basis for the fiduciary covenant that underlies the clinical encounter. Anthropology shows the physician-patient relalionship to be more than just a technical or contractual one, for the patient brings his existential anguish to the encounter, and the physician is expected to attend the sick living body as well as its lived dimension.

Key-words:
Medical anthropology; Bioethic; Vulnerability