"Just do your job": technology, bureaucracy, and the eclipse of conscience in contemporary medicine.
Journal Article (Journal Article)
Market metaphors have come to dominate discourse on medical practice. In this essay, we revisit Peter Berger and colleagues' analysis of modernization in their book The Homeless Mind and place that analysis in conversation with Max Weber's 1917 lecture "Science as a Vocation" to argue that the rise of market metaphors betokens the carry-over to medical practice of various features from the institutions of technological production and bureaucratic administration. We refer to this carry-over as the product presumption. The product presumption foregrounds accidental features of medicine while hiding its essential features. It thereby confounds the public understanding of medicine and impedes the professional achievement of the excellences most central to medical practice. In demonstrating this pattern, we focus on a recent article, "Physicians, Not Conscripts-Conscientious Objection in Health Care," in which Ronit Stahl and Ezekiel Emanuel decry conscientious refusals by medical practitioners. We demonstrate that Stahl and Emanuel's argument depends on the product presumption, ignoring and undermining central features of good medicine. We conclude by encouraging conscientious resistance to the product presumption and the language it engenders.
Full Text
Duke Authors
Cited Authors
- Blythe, JA; Curlin, FA
Published Date
- December 2018
Published In
Volume / Issue
- 39 / 6
Start / End Page
- 431 - 452
PubMed ID
- 30460467
Electronic International Standard Serial Number (EISSN)
- 1573-0980
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)
- 10.1007/s11017-018-9474-8
Language
- eng
Conference Location
- Netherlands