The New Modern Medicine

NIH RePORTER · NIH · G13 · $50,000 · view on reporter.nih.gov ↗

Abstract

Project Summary/Abstract Modern scientific medicine is often said to have begun by around the turn of the Twentieth Century. In the early Twenty-First Century, a new modern medicine reigns relying on unique concepts, logic and science that pose new challenges for health researchers and practitioners. This project will critically examine contemporary scientific medicine, including its historical significance, concepts, logic, and science, through philosophical research. It will answer the question: what makes scientific medicine today the same modern medicine of 100 years ago, and what makes it new and problematic? The present era is one of growing disillusionment and distrust in modern scientific medicine. People are increasingly turning away from scientific medical expertise. For those working in healthcare, public health or medical research, this project will provide a deeper understanding of contemporary medicine/medical science and some of its most serious challenges. It will be structured around eight real world challenges for medicine: disease chronicity and comorbidity, multifactorial disease etiology, medicalization, the hegemony of evidence-based medicine’s ‘hierarchy of evidence’, the relevance or ‘external validity’ of clinical trials, the meaning of population evidence for the individual, limits of biomedical understanding, and the reliability of therapeutic evidence. To achieve these research and health-related aims, several approaches in philosophy of science and philosophy of medicine will be used; namely, integrated history and philosophy of science (drawing on recent historical scholarship), naturalistic philosophy of science (drawing on scientific work), and analytic philosophy of science (using tools such as concept analysis, thought experiments, formal tools of analysis, and clear argument). The major outcome of the project will be a research monograph published through an academic press that will advance understanding within philosophy of science, history of science, and healthcare of major philosophical problems impacting contemporary medicine.

Key facts

NIH application ID
10114347
Project number
1G13LM013546-01
Recipient
UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH AT PITTSBURGH
Principal Investigator
Jonathan Patrick James Fuller
Activity code
G13
Funding institute
NIH
Fiscal year
2021
Award amount
$50,000
Award type
1
Project period
2021-09-15 → 2022-08-31