Russell Powell (Boston University), Eric Scarffe (Boston University)
The debate over the concept of disease is cast as one between naturalism and normativism, with a hybrid view staked out in between. In light of widely discussed problems with each account, some theorists recommend eliminating the disease concept in medical contexts. In this paper, we reframe the disease debate by way of examining Ereshefsky's widely cited criticisms. We argue that while prevailing accounts do not suffer from the particular defects that he and others have identified, they do suffer from other deficits — and this leads us to propose an amended hybrid account that satisfies the institutional-ethical desiderata for a concept of disease in human medicine.
