A clear understanding of the concept of health plays a key role in defining what health care should comprise and in developing adequate strategies for overcoming the current "health care crisis." This volume is the result of an international and interdisciplinary cooperation between medicine and philosophy on the current debate on the concept of health.
Besides offering a critical analysis of the WHO definition and a review of both ancient and contemporary conceptions of health, the cooperative effort of physicians and philosophers presented in this book works through the challenges which...

A clear understanding of the concept of health plays a key role in defining what health care should comprise and in developing adequate strategies for overcoming the current "health care crisis." This volume is the result of an international and interdisciplinary cooperation between medicine and philosophy on the current debate on the concept of health.
Besides offering a critical analysis of the WHO definition and a review of both ancient and contemporary conceptions of health, the cooperative effort of physicians and philosophers presented in this book works through the challenges which...

The book's main contribution is its interdisciplinary approach to the issue of sedation at the end-of-life. Because it occurs at the end of life, palliative sedation raises a number of important ethical and legal questions, including whether it is a covert form of euthanasia and for what purposes it may legally be used. Many of the book chapters address the first question and almost all deal with a specific form of the second: whether palliative sedation should be used for those experiencing "existential suffering"? This raises the question of what existential suffering is, a topic that is...