TY - JOUR

T1 - Learning from disability studies to introduce the role of the individual to naturalistic accounts of disease

AU - Altinok, Ozan Altan

N1 - Publisher Copyright: © The Author(s) 2024.

PY - 2024/9

Y1 - 2024/9

N2 - Disability studies have been successfully focusing on individuals' lived experiences, the personalization of goals, and the constitution of the individual in defining disease and restructuring public understandings of disability. Although they had a strong influence in the policy making and medical modeling of disease, their framework has not been translated to traditional naturalistic accounts of disease. I will argue that, using new developments in evolutionary biology (Extended Evolutionary Synthesis [EES] about questions of proper function) and behavioral ecology (Niche conformance and construction about the questions of reference classes in biostatistics accounts), the main elements of the framework of disability studies can be used to represent life histories at the conceptual level of the two main “non-normative” accounts of disease. I chose these accounts since they are related to medicine in a more descriptive way. The success of the practical aspects of disability studies this way will be communicated without causing injustice to the individual since they will represent the individuality of the patient in two main naturalistic accounts of disease: the biostatistical account and the evolutionary functional account. Although most accounts criticizing the concept of disease as value-laden do not supply a positive element, disability studies can supply a good point for descriptive extension of the concept through inclusion of epistemic agency.

AB - Disability studies have been successfully focusing on individuals' lived experiences, the personalization of goals, and the constitution of the individual in defining disease and restructuring public understandings of disability. Although they had a strong influence in the policy making and medical modeling of disease, their framework has not been translated to traditional naturalistic accounts of disease. I will argue that, using new developments in evolutionary biology (Extended Evolutionary Synthesis [EES] about questions of proper function) and behavioral ecology (Niche conformance and construction about the questions of reference classes in biostatistics accounts), the main elements of the framework of disability studies can be used to represent life histories at the conceptual level of the two main “non-normative” accounts of disease. I chose these accounts since they are related to medicine in a more descriptive way. The success of the practical aspects of disability studies this way will be communicated without causing injustice to the individual since they will represent the individuality of the patient in two main naturalistic accounts of disease: the biostatistical account and the evolutionary functional account. Although most accounts criticizing the concept of disease as value-laden do not supply a positive element, disability studies can supply a good point for descriptive extension of the concept through inclusion of epistemic agency.

KW - Disability studies

KW - Evolutionary medicine

KW - Extended evolutionary synthesis

KW - Niche construction

KW - Patient autonomy

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85197557055&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1007/s11019-024-10216-9

DO - 10.1007/s11019-024-10216-9

M3 - Article

C2 - 38958899

AN - SCOPUS:85197557055

VL - 27

SP - 407

EP - 417

JO - Medicine, Health Care and Philosophy

JF - Medicine, Health Care and Philosophy

SN - 1386-7423

IS - 3

ER -