Biomedical subjects

Steven D Edwards

Publications and source records attributed to Steven D Edwards.

4 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed2006

Disablement and personal identity.

A number of commentators claim their disability to be a part of their identity. This claim can be labelled 'the identity claim'. It is the claim that disabling characteristics of persons can be identity-constituting. According to a central constraint on traditional discussions of personal identity over time, only essential properties can count as identity-constituting properties. By this constraint, contingent properties of persons (those they might not have instanced) cannot be identity-constituting. Viewed through the lens of traditional approaches to the problem of personal identity over time, disablement is most likely to be regarded as a contingent property of a person and not an essential one. Hence, on traditional approaches, the identity claim must be false. An alternative account of identity is sketched here. It is one which exploits the idea of narrative identity, and points to five basic features of personal existence. When accounts of identity are structured in relation to these five features, it is argued, disablement can be shown to be identity-constituting, and hence the identity claim can be accepted.

Persons with Disabilities↗

PubMed2006

Why sports medicine is not medicine.

Sports Medicine as an apparent sub-class of medicine has developed apace over the past 30 years. Its recent trajectory has been evidenced by the emergence of specialist international research journals, standard texts, annual conferences, academic appointments and postgraduate courses. Although this field of enquiry and practice lays claim to the title 'sports medicine' this paper queries the legitimacy of that claim. Depending upon how 'sports medicine' and 'medicine' are defined, a plausible-sounding case can be made to show that sports medicine is not in fact a branch of medicine. Rather, it is sometimes closer to practices such as non-therapeutic cosmetic surgery. The argument of the paper is as follows. It begins with a brief statement concerning methodology. We then identify and subscribe to a plausible defining goal of medicine taken from a recognised authority in the field. Then two representative, authoritative, definitions of sports medicine are discussed. It is then shown that acceptance of these definitions of sports medicine generates a problem in that if they are accepted, no necessary commitment to the defining goal of medicine is present within sports medicine. It seems to follow that sports medicine is not medicine. In the final part of the paper a critical response to that conclusion is presented and rebutted. The response is one which rejects the identification of the defining goal of medicine upon which our argument rests.

Attitude to Health↗

PubMed2003

Three concepts of suffering.

This paper has three main aims. The first is to provide a critical assessment of two rival concepts of suffering, that proposed by Cassell and that proposed in this journal by van Hooft. The second aim of the paper is to sketch a more plausible concept of suffering, one which derives from a Wittgensteinian view of linguistic meaning. This more plausible concept is labeled an 'intuitive concept'. The third aim is to assess the prospects for scientific understanding of suffering.

Animals↗

PubMed2003

Nursing practice and the definition of human death.

This paper aims to highlight the gap in nursing literature of discussion of the definition of human death--to show that nurses should engage in such discussion. For the nursing role in the care of brain dead patients and their relatives may unwittingly promote and foster a definition of human death which is fundamentally flawed. A person can be warm, pink, have an independently beating heart and be breathing, yet still be diagnosed as brainstem dead. Nursing literature which discusses issues surrounding brain death (as opposed to brain death itself), proposes that nurses should suppress any reservations which they may have in accepting that a patient with the characteristics described is dead; and that they should try to allay any reservations which relatives of such dead patients might have. But what if the concept of brainstem death is flawed? Surely, as accountable professionals, nurses should not accept the role just referred to without satisfying themselves that the concept of brainstem death is coherent and robust. This paper tries to show that, on examination, this is not the case. The definition of human death which guides practice in the UK and elsewhere is fundamentally flawed. Instead of suppressing their own intuitions, and the intuitions of patients' relatives in the management of patients diagnosed as brainstem dead, nurses should critically examine the definition of death which currently informs clinical practice. Our conclusion is that this definition is false.

Adaptation, Psychological↗