Death Sentences

Abstract

There are many analogies between medical and judicial practice. This paper explores one such analogy, between “medicalisation” and “criminalisation”. Specifically, drawing on an analogy between the judge’s speech act of delivering a verdict and a physician’s speech act of giving a diagnosis, it suggests a novel account of the phenomenon of “overdiagnosis”. Using this approach, we can make some headway in understanding debates over the early detection of cancer. The final section outlines the relationship between this approach and familiar debates in philosophy of medicine over the nature of disease and philosophy of science over the “value free ideal”.