This book:
- provides an overview of key debates in the history of modern western medicine on the nature, knowledge, and value of disease;
- illustrates how these debates relate;
- provides a "contextual" or "localized" way of understanding disease;
- includes case studies of e.g. AIDS, genetic disease, and gendered disease;
- conveys the importance of the intersection and interrelation between and among factors that make up disease;
- illustrates how bioethical discussions about disease naming, classification, diagnosis, prognosis, and treatment are part of a much greater discussion in philosophy of medicine.