MAINTENANCE. On the occasion of the S3 Odéon meetings which will take place on September 3 in Paris, the philosopher André Compte-Sponville discusses the major challenges of tomorrow’s medicine.
What does the medicine of tomorrow have in store for us? Is the healthcare sector at the dawn of a new revolution? What are the ethical implications of our scientific choices? So many questions to which the thirty researchers, doctors, philosophers and economists will try to answer each other on September 3 on the stage of the Théâtre de l’Odéon (Paris), for S3 Odéon. This event, which is associated Why, offers personalities from various horizons, medical researchers, sociologists, to compare their views on the evolution of medicine. 7-minute interventions, accessible to all.
Among the speakers, André Comte-Sponville, member of the national ethics advisory committee. On the eve of the conference, Why actor, met the philosopher, who wonders about the growing place of medicine in our daily life.
What is the role of the philosopher in the field of medicine?
André Comte-Sponville: Problems revolving around health are major issues of our time. They are at the heart of my life, and that of every human being. Said like this, it may sound trivial. But the point is, health issues are always more important than money issues or sentimental issues. If you are told that you or your child is suffering from a serious illness, everything else is put into perspective. Health is obviously one of the essential dimensions of existence, and therefore philosophy must be concerned with it.
Why does medicine occupy a central place in society?
André Comte-Sponville: My idea is that the considerable progress of medicine means that it occupies an increasingly important place in our life as a whole, and in our social representations, to the point that it becomes exaggerated and exorbitant. Our civilization demands everything from medicine. The first occurrence that I noticed of this pan-medicalism is a joke from Voltaire. He wrote nicely “I have decided to be happy because it is good for the health”.
When happiness became a means to achieve the supreme goal of health, a huge reversal occurred compared to 25 centuries of civilization. “God is dead, long live the Safety …”, this is basically what pan-medicalism means. An ideology very well illustrated by a drawing by Sempé which represented the interior of a church in which a little lady, clutching her bag to her breast, said to God: “I trust You so much that most of the time , I call you Doctor ”.
André Comte-Sponville, philosopher: ” WHO defines health as a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being, which poses individual and collective problems … “
Could this ideology not lead to transhumanism?
André Comte-Sponville: Indeed, it could eventually lead to what is now called the augmented man or the improved man. As soon as we ask medicine to no longer cure diseases – which is its primary function – but to improve normal states, is it still medicine or is it already doping? A society which did not have health as its supreme value would be a poor civilization.
The very definition of health would therefore be called into question?
André Comte-Sponville: Absolutely. The border between the normal and the pathological has always been blurred, porous and uncertain. But advances in medicine have made it mobile. To illustrate this, I often take the example of Viagra. When it was launched, nearly twenty years ago, a round table brought together doctors, psychiatrists, sexologists and me, the philosopher on duty. I then asked one of the workers if he had tried Viagra on him. He replied “of course, and it’s very interesting”. In other words, the same drug that treats erectile dysfunction is also likely to improve normal erections. A question then arises: what is a normal erection?
The day when everyone will have molecules that will allow them to dive into a state of complete well-being or even euphoria, the very question of the human condition will be totally transformed. However, humanity is not pathological. It does not fall under medicine. Medicine is not going to cure us of finitude. But beware, this is not to challenge medical progress.
André Comte-Sponville : “ Advances in medicine are some of the best news of our time but they cannot cure us of humanity, because humanity is not a disease … “
How do you explain the paradoxical attraction for technological medicine and at the same time for alternative methods?
André Comte-Sponville: It is true that we see on the one hand a medicine which is becoming more and more scientific, and on the other a return or a development of sometimes ancestral practices, but of which the level of scientificity is weak, even zero. This rise in irrationalism is worrying.
From my perspective, medicine will never be too scientific. But the risk is that the medical teams forget the human dimension of their profession. This is why I often tell doctors not to leave the monopoly of softness to alternative medicine. One of the challenges of medicine today and tomorrow is to combine the greatest possible scientificity with the greatest possible gentleness.
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