Site • RSS • Apple PodcastsDescription (podcaster-provided):
For the deepest problems in healthcare, philosophy is the best medicine. In this podcast series, Jonathan Fuller, MD, PhD (University of Toronto) speaks to philosophers about their work on medicine and healthcare. You will hear from philosophers on the meaning and reality of disease, on their skeptical worries about evidence-based medicine, on current movements and controversies that shake medicine to its philosophical foundations. Visit our website at www.philosophersonmedicine.com.Themes and summary (AI-generated based on podcaster-provided show and episode descriptions):
➤ Philosophy of medicine • Health/disease concepts and disease realism • Evidence, EBM critiques, consensus • Causation and classification (DSM, epidemiology, race) • Clinical judgment • Public health, COVID-19, uncertainty, trust/vaccines • Overdiagnosis • Delusions • Pregnancy metaphysicsThis podcast features conversations between physician-scholar Jonathan Fuller and philosophers who study medicine and healthcare. Across episodes, it examines foundational questions about what medicine is for, how its goals are set, and how key concepts like health, disease, and disorder should be understood. Listeners encounter debates over whether diseases are objective biological kinds or partly shaped by human classification and values, and how definitions of disease influence real-world practices such as screening and concerns about overdiagnosis.
A major through-line is the nature of medical knowledge and evidence. The podcast explores the assumptions behind evidence-based medicine, why some forms of evidence (like randomized trials and meta-analyses) are privileged, and how uncertainty, modeling, and rapid decision-making operate in public health. It also considers the role and limits of expert consensus, the social organization of research, and skeptical arguments that contemporary medical interventions may deserve lower confidence than is often assumed.
Several episodes connect philosophical analysis to pressing public issues, including pandemic response, science communication, vaccine hesitancy, and public trust in healthcare institutions. The show also engages with ethically and socially charged categories used in medicine—such as race in epidemiology—probing their reality, utility, and implications.
Mental health and clinical practice are recurring topics as well, with attention to psychiatric classification systems, the nature of delusions, and the character of clinical judgment—whether it is rule-governed, tacit, virtuous, or potentially subject to automation. Overall, the podcast uses philosophical tools to clarify concepts, evaluate methods, and analyze how medicine interacts with society.
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Philosophy of Medicine on COVID-19 2021-Aug-28 |
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Sean Valles - Race in epidemiology and medicine 2020-Jul-06 |
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Jacob Stegenga - Medical Nihilism 2020-Jun-01 |
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Miriam Solomon - Expert consensus in medicine 2020-May-04 |
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Alex Broadbent - The causes of disease 2020-Mar-02 |
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Evidence-based medicine 2020-Jan-06 |
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Mental disorders and the DSM 2019-Nov-12 |
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Marc Ereshefsky - Primer on health and disease 2019-Oct-06 |
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Clinical Judgment 2019-Sep-02 |
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Matthew Parrott - Delusions 2019-Aug-04 |
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Elselijn Kingma - Metaphysics of pregnancy 2019-Jul-07 |
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Mary Walker - Overdiagnosis and the definition of disease 2019-Jun-02 |
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Jeremy Simon - Are diseases real? 2019-May-05 |
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Maya Goldenberg - Vaccine hesitancy and public trust in healthcare 2019-Apr-06 |
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Miriam Solomon - Pick your medicine: evidence-based, narrative, or precision? 2019-Feb-23 |
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Alex Broadbent - What is medicine? 2019-Jan-27 |
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Philosophers on Medicine - A New Frontier 2019-Jan-27 |