Linacre Quarterly, 18 augustus 2017
by Cardinal Willem Jacobus Eijk, archbishop of Utrecht
Is medicine losing its way? This question may seem to imply a serious warning, one needing a further explanation.
What I mean to say by the title of this paper is that we can detect an undeniable shift in medicine in the last forty to fifty years. Medicine used to focus on what we call “health care” in a classical sense, that is, the treatment of people suffering from diseases, injuries or handicaps, or the alleviation of pain and other symptoms. In addition to this, in the last half century, it has begun to offer more and more treatments aiming to perfect the qualities of people who are otherwise healthy.