Value Of Disease Study

As the development trend of modern medicine and the society suggests, medicine is breaking through the limitation of tradition and develops towards a wider fields. Meanwhile, the social feature of medicine becomes more prominent, as people's needs for health besides food and clothing are inclined to be comprehensive, individual and various, and holistic health, including physical, psychological, social and environmental health has caused unparalleled attention. However, the biomedical technique is faced with severe criticism that is concentrated on its apathy towards patients, lack of care, and high charge. Actually, the high tech of modern medicine has brought high expense, high cost and high demands, inevitably causing the inequality of limited resource allocation. More and more advanced medical techniques lead to more and more severe belief crisis. Disease is an essential dimension that comprises life existence with health. For health, its utility, no matter it is positive or negative, is bound to be a focus of humanistic medicine. In stead of just combating or eliminating diseases, it is wiser to pay attention to diseases as well as patients, study the value of disease at the same time, and highlight the important role of patient psychology in disease appearance and treatment. By doing this, the proportion of humanities will be enlarged in medicine and the medical humanistic spirit will be stressed. Therefore, the study on disease value, which will promote the combination of medical humanities and medicine and accelerate the reform of medical education, is an important issue of great necessity. In a word, this study has important theoretical and practical value.To study the disease, it is inevitable to start with recognizing and mastering the nature of disease. Disease can be found throughout the whole history of human civilization. As a result, there is a long history and varied viewpoints concerning its interpretation which is actually faced with the semantic and logic dilemma. Following the cognitive rule, i.e."from specific to general, from concrete to abstract", we'll first feel the disease as a different situation of life. Looking through the medical history and different definitions of disease under Chinese and foreign cultural background, we'll perceive the complexity on how to define "disease" Entangled with biomedical knowledge, social structure, and cultural value, the disease interpretation has been divided into various definitions and evaluation models as follows:divinity medical concept, natural philosophy concept, natural science concept, Darwinist concept, genetic&molecular medical concept, etc. In the natural science field, disease is defined with the cognitive level structure as the causal relationship between a disease and its symptoms; in the humanistic science field, it is defined with the patient's complete condition description, real and abundant disease experience, clear social role and system. Having organized these various disease definitions, this study reached a consensus on "disease":a series of functional, metabolic, and structural changes of an organism (including body and mind) which are caused by certain inner and outer factors, embodied as an injury&anti-injury pathological process, and considered as a balance damage and deviation of the organism environment. Finally, through defining ontology, deducing categories, seeking reasons and discussing standards, this study proposed the nature of disease as the showing of ontology's variety. During this process, this study achieved an overall and detailed interpretation and proposed the logic beginning of the humanistic research on disease.The basic framework of disease value theory has been deduced from the fundamental concepts of disease value through various value theories. It is assumed that the close relationship between diseases and human beings is a cultural objective phenomenon and a fact concerning value. Soka Gakkai's founder--Makiguchi's value theory based on the "property doctrine" and "relation doctrine" is believed as the philosophical guide for disease value research, especially the discussion that the value has positive and negative quality and different quantity. Based on this, the disease value is defined as all the meanings that disease has posed on life, including positive, negative, and zero meanings, and they are of purpose and utility for humans. This value is formed on the basis of the relationship between diseases and humans. Its existence depends on the disease property, typically showing the force between the subjective and objective and the variety of positive and negative orientation. Instructed with this assumption, this study explored the value property of disease and summarized the value system of disease, thus initially establishing the framework of disease value theory. By doing this, this study has opened a new window for value research and added to new ways of analyzing disease value.Following the categorization rule of disease value and the embodied phenomenology way, this study made a detailed interpretation on the direct value that takes a dominant position in disease value system. This paper applied body phenomenology to analyze "the objective and subjective narration of disease", clarified patient experience on disease meanings, determined the birth, development, and connotation of direct value of disease from two perspectives, i.e. biological and humanistic, and two natures, i.e. positive and negative, built the related explanation, and creatively proposed the ultimate value of disease that "it is inevitable to follow the species evolution law and realize the independent life". From the perspective of a living creature, every type of disease causes injury to human body and mentality, prevents life from existing and prolonging, hurts the subjective, others, groups and society, does harm to freedom, equality, equity, and justice, fully showing the "evil" of the negative value of disease. Humanistically speaking, while disease brings about physical disorder, loss of familiar world, moral misunderstanding, disorder of social relationships, cost of material and spiritual wealth, disease fully shows the external symptoms with the phenomenology theory and "sound" tool; disease indicates the dignity of body and arouses potential and power; disease promotes the return of humanity and provides humanistic care as social civilization and human existence; disease stimulates multi-perspective thinking on humanity and adds to ways of broadening philosophical view; disease promotes the cautious judgment and reflection on social civilization. Research on the direct value of disease leads us to the explanation of the ultimate value. Darwinist medical thought indicates that the evolution can't be separated from diseases which are necessary cost the evolution should pay. It is assumed that the essence of disease value system and related theory lies in the disease objective's ultimate pursuit for the life subjective, i.e. the independent life. The important meaning and value orientation of disease in life require human society to know how to overcome the disorder disease brings, explore scientific and civilized ways to treat disease and life from the perspective of ethics, and guide contemporary humans to rebuild rational way of living.After clarifying the ultimate value of disease, this study started to discuss the indirect (tool) value that is closely related with the ultimate value. Disease exists in the body, but it possesses rich and clear cultural connotation out of the body. To interpret the disease value, we have to exceed the clinical biomedical boundary and explore the cultural metaphor and social symbol concerned with disease in such fields as economy, politics, history, literature and law. With regard to economy, disease makes an overdraft on the healthy development of economy, damages social productive forces by affecting human resource, influences development environment by impeding the effective use of resource, affects the accumulation of social wealth by forming high cost. In the field of politics, disease becomes the enchantment of political control, gives the birth of modern medicine system, and intensifies political power; disease becomes metaphor or enchantment and changes into the accomplice of political persecution; disease evolves into attached fruit to solid regime and promotes the rise of humanistic politics and culture. For history, disease is an indicator of historical changes, it could provide new explanations for the unveiling of mysterious historical changes; once out of control, severe diseases could leave a deep marking to an era through changing the historical course; disease is found to have cast important and little-known influence on history-creating figures in human history. For literature, disease and treatment are considered as parents of literary creation because of their record of clinical history, promote the formation of medical social remark from the perspective of literature and the birth of new ways of literature self-treatment. For law, as'a natural item'under the legal regulation, disease is a necessary complement to the healthy security of basic human rights, a necessary ground to realize the scientific legislation and effective judicature, and a necessary means to promote social security and stability. At the same time, all the values disease produces in the above fields, no matter it is positive or negative, have rich and important indications.The study on disease value is aimed to employ and testify the disease value theory, i.e. to realize the disease value. The potential and inner values of disease respectively turn into realistic and outer values. During this process, human beings watch and reflect on themselves to improve the life quality, thus realizing the healthy growth and overall development of humanity. To accomplish this process, we need to have the concept and theory of disease value accepted by the education targets so as to make disease value meaningful. With regard to medical education, we shall reform the course arrangement, intensify such courses as medical sociology and humanistic science, stimulate students'interest in social psychology, culture and ethics, encourage them to approach and watch patients in hospital, train them to establish disease explanation model of patients and their family members, require them to read and explain disease narration materials with assessment. In the health care system, we have to highlight the promotion of self-care concept and activity, stress self-treatment, encourage the combination of pain care and disease treatment, change the contemporary health care system that is featured with economic benefits, system efficiency, and career competition, and promote the formation of disease-centered treatment. In biomedical research, we should continually broaden its academic fields, break through the boundary of terms, e.g. molecular, medicine, pay much attention to disease and patient humanity, introduce such terms as disease, painful narration, etc., and have disease cared by both scientific and humanistic knowledge.To echo with the starting point, this study discussed the meaning of disease and life in the conclusion. The display of meanings and utilities that disease (objective) brings to human society (subjective)in disease value is a qualified status that medical humanity has pursued and a reflection of hope, faith and trust humans have posed on medical humanity. From the perspective of natural instinct, the attention disease value research pays to human nature is a reverence for life and health; from the perspective of social relationship, this attention is a care for life and human life quality; from the perspective of spiritual nature, it is an independent life and an ultimate concern about humans.