Document Detail


Towards an ethics of authentic practice.
MedLine Citation:
PMID:  19018894     Owner:  NLM     Status:  MEDLINE    
Abstract/OtherAbstract:
This essay asks how we might best elaborate an ethics of authentic practice. Will we be able to agree on a set of shared terms through which ethical practice will be understood? How will we define ethics and the subject's relation to authoritative structures of power and knowledge? We begin by further clarifying our critique of evidence-based medicine (EBM), reflecting on the intimate relation between theory and practice. We challenge the charge that our position amounts to no more than 'subjectivism' and 'antiauthoritarian' theory. We argue that an ethical practice ought to question the authority of EBM without falling into the trap of dogmatic antiauthoritarianism. In this, we take up the work of Hannah Arendt, who offers terms to help understand our difficult political relation to authority in an authentic ethical practice. We continue with a discussion of Michel Foucault's use of 'free speech' or parrhesia, which he adopts from Ancient Greek philosophy. Foucault demonstrates that authentic ethical practice demands that we 'speak truth to power.' We conclude with a consideration of recent biotechnologies, and suggest that these biomedical practices force us to re-evaluate our theoretical understanding of the ethical subject. We believe that we are at a crucial juncture: we must develop an ethics of authentic practice that will be commensurable with new and emergent biomedical subjectivities.
Authors:
Stuart J Murray; Dave Holmes; Amélie Perron; Geneviève Rail
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Publication Detail:
Type:  Journal Article; Review    
Journal Detail:
Title:  Journal of evaluation in clinical practice     Volume:  14     ISSN:  1365-2753     ISO Abbreviation:  J Eval Clin Pract     Publication Date:  2008 Oct 
Date Detail:
Created Date:  2008-11-21     Completed Date:  2009-02-20     Revised Date:  -    
Medline Journal Info:
Nlm Unique ID:  9609066     Medline TA:  J Eval Clin Pract     Country:  England    
Other Details:
Languages:  eng     Pagination:  682-9     Citation Subset:  IM    
Affiliation:
Department of English, Faculty of Arts and School of Graduate Studies, Ryerson University, Toronto, Canada. sjmurray@ryerson.ca
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MeSH Terms
Descriptor/Qualifier:
Authoritarianism*
Benchmarking
Clinical Competence
Clinical Medicine
Diffusion of Innovation
Dissent and Disputes*
Ethical Theory*
Evidence-Based Medicine / education,  ethics*,  organization & administration
Existentialism
Freedom
Humans
Information Dissemination
Knowledge
Philosophy, Medical*
Postmodernism*
Power (Psychology)
Professional Autonomy
Risk-Taking
Thinking
Truth Disclosure

From MEDLINE®/PubMed®, a database of the U.S. National Library of Medicine


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