This study examines the multidimensional impact of infectious diseases on societies through the case of malaria, with particular emphasis on the anti-malaria campaigns implemented in Türkiye during the early Republican period within the framework of the studies titled The Sanitary and Social Geography of Turkey. These works constitute primary-source materials that systematically document the country's health conditions, social structure, and geographical characteristics during the early years of the Republic. In this study, data on swamps and malaria contained in these publications were analysed through a systematic document analysis and regional comparative approach. The findings demonstrate that the relationship between swamps and malaria varied considerably across provinces. While a strong positive association was identified along the Mediterranean and Aegean coasts and in the major river deltas, this relationship was substantially weaker in the high-altitude regions of Eastern Anatolia. Furthermore, the effectiveness of swamp-drainage programmes in controlling malaria remained limited due to factors such as fragmented implementation, recurrent flooding, and irrigation projects. The analysis also indicates that agricultural activities, particularly rice cultivation, contributed to the spread of malaria by creating artificial swamp environments. Consequently, malaria control emerged as a central policy domain during the early Republican period, becoming closely integrated with the state's broader strategies of nation-building and socio-economic development.
Contemporary bioethics operates within pluralistic societies, where ethical reasoning is not confined to prescriptive frameworks but rather involves deliberation across competing moral perspectives. Although the dominant approaches remain largely Western, there has been an increasing interest in integrating non-Western philosophical traditions. This study examines whether Al-Farabi’s ethical framework can contribute to contemporary bioethical discourse without assuming direct conceptual equivalence. The study employed a sequential mixed-methods design integrating lexical analysis, hermeneutic reconstruction, and empirical validation. A corpus of seven key works by Al-Farabi, including The Attainment of Happiness and The Virtuous City, was analysed to identify recurring ethical concepts. These concepts were then subjected to contextual hermeneutic interpretation and subsequently operationalised into survey constructs. Data were collected from 265 medical and bioethics professionals and analysed using ANOVA, Pearson’s correlation, logistic regression, and chi-squared tests. The findings indicate statistically significant, albeit weak, associations between the reconstructed ethical constructs of Al-Farabi and contemporary bioethical attitudes. The justice construct was negatively associated with the acceptance of gene-editing interventions (F(1, 263) = 4.02, p = 0.047; r = − 0.122; odds ratio (OR) = 0.78, 95
Abstract Background Traditional approaches in medical ethics have primarily focused on the consequences of diagnoses, emphasizing their impact on patients’ lives, treatment options, and social perception. While this perspective remains indispensable, it is limited in its consideration of the conditions under which diagnostic categories are created and applied. However, understanding these processes is essential, as they shape not only individual patient experiences but also broader social norms and the framework conditions of health systems. Methods Drawing on Michel Foucault’s work, this paper examines the intersection between epistemic authority and ethics in the production of medical knowledge. Foucault’s analyses of medicine reveal how diagnostic practices are not purely objective but are embedded in institutional frameworks that regulate the production and application of medical knowledge. This perspective resonates with recent discussions in medical ethics such as epistemic injustice. However, as these often converge with Foucault’s ideas, his work provides a suitable basis for a comprehensive examination of the way in which diagnoses are handled. Results Diagnoses are not merely neutral descriptions of objective biological phenomena, but emerge from specific epistemic and institutional frameworks that structure medical knowledge. A Foucauldian lens allows for the formulation of critical questions that encourage a shift in perspective, from evaluating only the consequences of diagnoses to interrogating the processes that produce and validate them. This approach highlights the ethical significance of medical epistemology itself and its influence on patient care, social norms, and health governance. Conclusions Ethical analysis in medicine must extend beyond the immediate effects of diagnosis. Attention to the production and structuring of medical knowledge is necessary to fully understand how diagnoses influence patients’ experiences, shape social expectations, and reinforce systems of power. With the help of a Foucauldian Shift, medical ethics can more comprehensively address the moral dimensions of diagnosis, moving from consequences to the broader conditions that generate them.
The increasing integration of artificial intelligence in clinical decision support systems (AI-CDSS) has fueled expectations of more personalized and effective diagnostics and therapies. By incorporating machine learning methods, AI-CDSS promise enhanced predictive accuracy, improved stratification, and innovative individualized care. However, this technological optimism is accompanied by complex ethical challenges, including issues of explainability, trust, autonomy, and data security. At the core of these debates lies the question of responsibility, which involves both its attribution and diffusion, as well as the underlying normative standards guiding moral action. In the context of healthcare practice, responsibility is further complicated by moral diversity—the coexistence of varying moral values, cultural beliefs, and ethical frameworks among healthcare professionals, patients, and institutional stakeholders. This plurality challenges the establishment of a unified normative standard necessary for ethically sound responsibility attribution. This paper offers an analysis of moral diversity and AI-CDSS as a challenge for responsibility in healthcare environments. Using a relational concept of responsibility the study examines key areas in which moral diversity affects responsibility in AI-mediated decision-making. This includes algorithmic bias, healthcare professional and patient interaction and the role of patients. Through these examples, the paper explains how different normative standards intensify ethical complexity in AI-supported clinical contexts. It argues that greater ethical sensitivity to moral diversity is essential—both in the development of AI-CDSS and in their application within morally value-laden healthcare situations.
Rooted in “the real human being and their practice”, the humanistic thought of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) encompasses four core dimensions: the Theory of Valuing Life and Attaining Sagehood, the Theory of Temperament and Human Nature, the Theory of Subject Mutual Benefit, and the Theory of Body-State Synchronism. It provides crucial support for the mutual learning of Chinese and Western medical humanities. The Theory of Valuing Life and Attaining Sagehood resonates with Western bioethics while adding a unique dimension of spiritual self-cultivation; the Theory of Temperament and Human Nature aligns with the precision medicine paradigm and complements the perspective of cultural ethical examination; the Theory of Subject Mutual Benefit firmly opposes the objectification of patients and theoretically expands the Western concept of “patient-centered care”; the Theory of Body-State Synchronism integrates individual physical and mental health with collective public well-being, aligning with the core values of contemporary global health governance. As an ideological system deeply embedded in Chinese civilization, it takes the Qi ontology and Yin-Yang balance as its profound metaphysical foundation, constructing a holistic medical humanistic paradigm independent of the Western biomedical model. In the contemporary academic context where medical humanities are moving toward pluralistic coexistence, the value of non-Western medical traditions has attracted increasing scholarly attention. It can not only enrich the Western medical humanistic tradition through cross-cultural dialogue but also provide solid ethical support for the global dissemination and clinical practice of TCM, ultimately realizing two-way mutual learning, complementarity and symbiosis between Eastern and Western medical humanities across cultures.
BackgroundAlzheimer's is a progressive disorder of the brain that gradually affects memory, personality, behaviour, identity, and interpersonal relationships, particularly among older adults. Alice Munro's novella "The Bear Came Over the Mountain" offers a compelling literary framework for exploring these impacts through narrative gerontology, a lens that emphasizes storytelling's role in shaping identity and relational bonds during ageing and illness.MethodThis study applies narrative gerontology to analyze Munro's depiction of Alzheimer's, focusing on the experiences of Fiona and Grant. Through detailed textual analysis, it examines the gerontological concept of "we-narrative" (shared relational identity) to understand how identity, memory loss, and relational dynamics evolve.ResultsMunro portrays Alzheimer's as both a medical condition and a social experience, fragmenting Fiona's sense of self and reshaping the couple's shared identity. Fiona's fading memories unravel her narrative, diminishing her autonomy, while Grant's shift from husband to caregiver redefines their relationship. The novella's disjointed structure reflects the cognitive chaos of Alzheimer's, deepening its emotional impact. The gerontological "we-narrative," representing shared relational identity, reveals the enduring strength of their bond, as Grant's selfless actions highlight a transformed expression of love.DiscussionDementia narrative features how caregivers' identity gradually forms through the lived experience of supporting a loved one with cognitive decline. These findings align with narrative gerontology's view that stories help individuals and caregivers navigate identity and loss. Munro's work challenges stereotypes about ageing, emphasizing the emotional complexity of caregiving and the resilience of human connections.ConclusionMunro's novella powerfully illustrates Alzheimer's multifaceted effects, using narrative to explore identity, care, and relational adaptation in the context of ageing and illness.
This study compares power dynamics in two culturally and generically distinct medical television series: the Egyptian comedy Balto (2023) and the American drama The Resident (2018). Drawing on Halliday’s Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL), particularly the Mood system, six scenes (three from each series) are analysed to show how declarative, interrogative, and imperative clauses construct hierarchy, authority, and resistance. The analysis reveals that in Balto, power is framed through humour and exaggeration, with interns positioned by softened or ironic speech, while senior doctors assert dominance in playful yet critical ways. In The Resident, authority is enforced through direct commands and evaluative questions that blur mentorship with intimidation. These contrasts demonstrate how genre and cultural context shape linguistic realizations of institutional power, highlighting Mood as a key resource for negotiating authority across divergent settings.
BACKGROUND:Medicine has long been understood as both a scientific discipline and a moral and relational practice. Yet within contemporary hospital environments shaped by efficiency demands, digital infrastructures, and performance metrics, the promotion of a patient's personhood cannot be assumed to remain visible or structurally supported. Clinical supervision represents a central site in which professional values are embodied and transferred to the future generation of physicians, yet little is known about how supervisors themselves experience sustaining their own commitments to personhood within this context. METHODS:This study explores how clinical supervisors experience fostering and sustaining the promotion of patient personhood while supervising medical students, interns, and residents in two Swedish university hospitals. Seventeen physicians participated in in-depth semi-structured interviews. Data analysis employed a critical phenomenological approach, enabling examination of both lived experiences and the institutional conditions shaping these. FINDINGS:Two interrelated dimensions were identified. First, supervisors described actively rendering patient personhood visible and legitimate within clinical reasoning, translating relational attentiveness into recognised forms of professional competence, modelling humility within hierarchical settings, and protecting core humanistic values within organisational cultures. Second, they described sustaining personhood in their own work as ongoing moral work requiring development over time, reminders in practice, inspiration through interaction, and deliberate inner resolve. Promoting personhood, thus, emerged as reciprocal and cumulative, where through teaching, supervisors simultaneously renewed and reshaped their own ethical commitments. CONCLUSIONS:The findings suggest that patient personhood is not passively inherited within contemporary clinical environments but actively cultivated through supervisory and relational practice. By situating supervisors' experiences within organisational and cultural structures, the study contributes a theoretically grounded account of how medicine's dual character as both a technocratic and a humanistic practice is negotiated in everyday work. Ultimately, sustaining patient personhood, and promoting it in the future generation of physicians depends not only on supervisors' individual commitment but also on institutional conditions that either enable or constrain its visibility.
Physician burnout has increasingly been associated not only with workload and administrative burden, but also with a perceived erosion of meaning and professional identity within contemporary medical practice. This article explores the potential of Hans-Georg Gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics as a resource for reorienting physicians toward a more sustainable practice of medicine. The present argument does not propose hermeneutic awareness as a singular solution to burnout, but rather as a conceptual lens through which one important dimension of burnout — the experience of diminished meaning — may be understood. Key elements of Gadamer’s philosophy as outlined in Truth and Method Gadamer (Truth and method (2., rev. ed). Continuum 2003) and The Enigma of Health Gadamer (The enigma of health: The art of healing in a scientific age 1996) are presented here as a conceptual framework, inviting the doctor to reconsider the doctor-patient dialogue from a new horizon—one shaped by a curiosity to know more about the person sitting across from them. Existing scholarship in the phenomenology of medicine has emphasised the interpretive nature of clinical practice; the present article extends this discussion by considering how hermeneutic awareness may also support physician wellbeing through renewed attentiveness to relational and interpretive dimensions of care. Reflective exercises are offered as illustrative applications of Gadamerian concepts within contemporary clinical contexts. While structural causes of burnout require systemic solutions, a hermeneutic perspective highlights how meaning, dialogue, and interpretive attentiveness may remain accessible within everyday clinical encounters. In this way, Gadamer’s philosophy contributes to ongoing efforts within the health humanities to re-articulate medicine as both a scientific and interpretive practice.
BACKGROUND: Providing humane care in intensive care units (ICUs) is a crucial ethical issue due to the critical nature of patients in these units. This study aimed to examine the experiences of ICU nurses in providing humanity-based care (HBC) to patients admitted to these units. METHODS: This study uses an exploratory-descriptive qualitative design. In-depth, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 9 nurses working in the ICUs of five educational hospitals. Finally, the data were analyzed via conventional content analysis with the five steps of Graneheim and Lundman’s technique. RESULTS: Data analysis identified a main theme and eight main categories. The main themes of this study were: “humanity-based care” and the eight categories included providing patient-centered care, providing patients’ best interests, providing mental and emotional comfort, evidence-based practice, respect for human dignity and values, avoiding violence in care, patient education, and effective patient communication. CONCLUSION: Since helping and caring for a person at risk is a moral obligation, the critical conditions of ICU patients and the need for HBC increase the duty of nurses as providers of direct care to this group of patients.
The medical humanities are an interdisciplinary field that combines the humanities, social sciences, and arts with medical education and practice. It fosters a multidisciplinary understanding of the human condition, patient suffering, the roles of healthcare professionals, and the community surrounding them. Familiarity with the humanities enhances physicians’ perspectives, communication skills, understanding of patients, and overall quality of healthcare. This article reviews the general and health humanities courses offered at the Faculty of Medicine at Mazandaran University of Medical Sciences (MAZUMS) in Iran, and those available worldwide. New incremental courses have been introduced at MAZUMS, along with early-stage integrated approaches. Our study of universities worldwide examined medical schools across the US, Canada, Europe, the UK, China, Taiwan, India, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Africa, and Australia. It aimed to understand how health humanities are organized, their importance, and their benefits. We found that while Mazandaran University of Medical Sciences recently added health humanities courses, integration remains limited compared to leading institutions. The study demonstrates that incorporating health humanities enhances empathy, reflective skills, and patient care. These findings suggest that a structured approach can fill gaps, improve medical education in Iran as well as many countries, and align it with global standards.
Background Medical students are exposed to human suffering more frequently and intensely than before they began their training, but they are often not sufficiently educated for these experiences. To our knowledge, perspectives of suffering among medical students have never been explored or classified. We aimed to measure and describe the philosophical and religious views of human suffering among medical students. Methods First-through fourth-year medical students at a midwestern medical school were asked to complete an anonymous survey about their views of suffering using the Views of Suffering Scale. Information regarding student demographics, specialty interests, previous experiences, raised religious identities, and current religious identities were collected and evaluated against ten subscales common to specific religious and non-religious groups. Results Students identifying with a religious tradition tended to endorse suffering perspectives consistent with that tradition, while atheist and agnostic students were more likely to endorse Random and Unorthodox perspectives. Compared to preclinical medical students, clinical students reported higher scores for the subscales of Limited Knowledge, Providence, and Soul-Building. Conclusions Students differed in suffering perspectives, especially by religious identity and preclinical and clinical cohorts. This study provides a foundation to further explore beliefs about suffering among healthcare trainees and how these beliefs may influence patient care and student resilience.
Helpless, the human race stands in front of Artificial Intelligence (AI) that has invaded us and evaded our defences, leaving the world stranded and surrendering to each and every mobile app notification suggesting any persuasive personalised contents, for instance. Wherever we go nowadays, we cannot but touch the deep impact, positive and negative, on all life aspects, including healthcare and our well-being. The dental field is no exception to that, with its favourite child and first specialisation that rests in its heart of hearts, orthodontics, being also hit and beaten by AI. This epistemological review spots the light on the use of AI as an overall experience whether in healthcare, medicine, or even dentistry, but more specifically in the orthodontic arena, and discusses possible advantages and disadvantages as well as future threats and challenges with the eye of a critical philosophical approach and the lens of a fundamental debate-based discussion. Various studies have been collected from different databases to support the detailed arguments presented, showing the different rationalities, and irrationalities, concerning the use of AI.
While disability studies have significantly evolved over the past few decades, cinematic representations of people with disabilities, particularly in Egypt, still remains an understudied area. Thus, the present paper uses the cultural model of disability to comparatively analyse two culturally diverse films that feature visually impaired protagonists; namely, the Egyptian al-Kīt Kāt (1991) and the American Scent of a Woman (1992). The study investigates the lives of two males who experience blindness after having been sighted, and analyses their culturally-constructed impairment, submission to/subversion of mainstream stereotypes, control (or lack thereof) of the metanarrative of blindness, and the effect of their impairment on the quality of their lives and the lives of those around them. It concludes that the films contribute to deconstructing dominant ableist narratives critiqued within disability studies, offering representations of blindness that are empathetic, multidimensional, and resistant to cultural stereotypes.
Does late style reflect experience, mastery, and wisdom? Does it represent a culmination of effort and closure—or, as Edward Said affirms, “intransigence, difficulty, and unresolved contradiction?” (Late 7) The proposed paper attempts to answer these questions in relation to Radwa Ashour’s autobiography Athqal min Radwa or Heavier than Radwa (2013) and in the light of Said’s theory of Late style. In this context, it aims to examine, through the field of medical humanities, the relation between illness and lateness on the one hand, and style, on the other. Written as it is under the shadow of turmoil and unrest both on the personal and public levels, it offers a rare opportunity to closely examine how Ashour chooses to approach long-standing political, academic and intellectual questions that have always been at the core of her writing endeavor. The paper questions the universality of the features attributed to late style and how far they fit Ashour’s text.
“Medical Records of Integrating Traditional Chinese and Western Medicine: Yi Xue Zhong Zhong Can Xi Lu” (abbreviated as YXZZCXL), authored by the influential physician Xichun Zhang, a pioneering authority on the integration of Chinese and Western medicine, enriched the path of integrated medicine. The formulas documented in this work are renowned as “formulas of proven efficacy” with excellent clinical efficacy, playing a significant role in the development of modern Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM). This raises a key question: what is the most effective way to study and understand YXZZCXL? Drawing on their learning journey, clinical practice, and prior research, we propose that commencing with the Qi philosophy concept of “Ascending-Descending-Exiting-Entering” (ADEE) provides a straightforward yet effective approach to comprehending the prescription composition within YXZZCXL and the underlying TCM treatment theories it encompasses. Crucially, this approach serves to synthesize Zhang’s scattered clinical insights into a coherent ADEE framework. The framework helps fill systematic gaps in the structure of his academic thought on formula design and treatment principles. Building upon this foundational ADEE framework, we may achieve a leap from ADEE theory towards the development of a novel Qi-movement-centered ADEE syndrome differentiation method. This method serves as a clinical diagnostic and therapeutic tool, effectively linking TCM’s ADEE theory to formulas exerting corresponding regulatory effects, and is particularly indicated for disorders characterized by abnormal Qi movement. It must be emphasized that utilizing ADEE for formula categorization in this study is not a mechanical exercise; rather, it offers four fundamental conceptual perspectives through which disease mechanisms and treatments can be understood. Notably, due to the lack of systematic elaboration on the specific concept of “Exiting-Entering” in classical Chinese medical texts, this study proposes a preliminary interpretation grounded in TCM Qi theory and invites scholarly discourse to refine its theoretical connotation. This three-stage research pathway—synthesizing classical theory, constructing a theoretical framework, and developing a novel differentiation method—is proposed as a potential model for studying other TCM classics. Overall, the most significant academic contribution of this study lies in the systematic proposal and construction of a novel theoretical framework for treatment based on syndrome differentiation, which emerges centuries after the last major advancement in TCM diagnostic approaches.
The placenta is a rich source of stem cells that can be used in scientific research and therapeutic applications. The aim of the current study was to understand the perspectives of Jordanian women on placenta donation for research purposes. The study questionnaire was developed using Google Forms and distributed across social media platforms. A total of 923 women participated in the study. About 64.0
The COVID-19 pandemic exposed acute tensions in the United Kingdom’s National Health Service (NHS) between its egalitarian self-image and the utilisation of overtly utilitarian tools such as QALY-based cost-effectiveness and prognosis-driven triage. This paper offers a systematic philosophical diagnosis of those tensions through the lens of refined utilitarianism, a consequentialist theory that grounds moral rules in their long-run welfare effects while requiring genuine social approbation and cultural fit. After reconstructing the classical act-/rule-utilitarian debate and engaging canonical critics (Rawls, Scanlon, Dworkin and Williams), the paper distinguishes refined utilitarianism from both rule utilitarianism and prioritarianism, then tests the theory against UK healthcare practice pre- and post-pandemic. Using documentary analysis of NICE technology appraisals, BMA emergency guidance, and statutory equality duties, it is shown that the NHS operates a two-tier code: egalitarian, need-based rules in conditions of routine capacity, and outcome-maximising rules, tempered by fairness safeguards, during acute scarcity. This structure closely matches refined utilitarian predictions: apparently non-utilitarian norms (equal access, prohibition of direct age discrimination, ‘rule of rescue’) are retained because they enhance trust, compliance and therefore aggregate welfare, while harsher maximisation moves (frailty scoring, ICU reallocation, staff testing priority) are publicly justified and time-limited to preserve legitimacy. The analysis answers familiar objections, impracticality of hedonic calculus, neglect of minorities, integrity threats, by showing how socially embedded rules mitigate each problem without surrendering the aim of greatest overall benefit. The paper concludes that UK healthcare is best interpreted as utilitarian in a refined sense, and that refined utilitarianism provides a practicable, normatively attractive template for future resource-allocation frameworks in public health emergencies and beyond.
The question of what it means to be human remains one of the most fundamental inquiries in philosophy, with profound ethical implications, particularly in healthcare. This paper offers a conceptual framework for healthcare professionals by exploring the ontological status of the human being and the concept of personhood, grounded in classical metaphysical principles. Through a phenomenological, epistemological, axiological, and ontological lens, it proposes a unified understanding of human dignity that can inform and elevate clinical practice. While the dialogue between Greek philosophy and the Judeo-Christian tradition established a robust and enduring notion of dignity, and Kantian ethics reinforced the centrality of the human being as an end in itself, the increasing compartmentalization of knowledge—though fruitful in some respects—has obscured the integral vision of the human person. In the medical field, this fragmentation can diminish awareness of the relational, existential, and spiritual dimensions essential to humane care. In response, this paper reaffirms the relevance of philosophical anthropology for medical ethics. It contends that safeguarding human dignity amid contemporary scientific and technological challenges requires returning to an ontological vision of the person-one that transcends functionalist and reductionist models and restores the human being to the center of healthcare. By doing so, it offers professionals a deeper foundation for ethical discernment and compassionate practice.
The 2022 revision of China’s Shenzhen Special Economic Zone Medical Regulations marks the nation’s inaugural legislative recognition of “living wills” as legally binding instruments. However, the implementation of living wills in clinical practice encounters significant ethical challenges, influenced by traditional cultural norms, prevailing medical ethics standards, policy frameworks, healthcare resource allocation, and systemic constraints. To advance this end-of-life care paradigm, we propose a threefold strategy: (1) enhancing public education on death literacy and autonomy, (2) improving the legal procedures for establishing and implementing living wills, and (3) establishing a comprehensive national hospice care safeguard system. These measures are critical to ensuring the protection of terminally ill patients’ fundamental rights and dignity.
