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(2014) Ethics and the arts, Dordrecht, Springer.
The major medical/scientific research project of the past two decades consists of the human genome project and its clinical applications. The project can usefully be framed as a quest to cure disease, especially cancer, and even to defy mortality. The hero of this quest is the project leader, who currently is trying, almost desperately, to "translate" the science of the genome into public health practice and the practice of medicine, termed "personalised medicine." In America's dysfunctional and patchwork healthcare system, adding another layer of extremely expensive and (to date) marginally effective screening procedures is a hard sell. Nonetheless, using metaphor to frame the human genome project as a mythical "quest for life" can make it seem altogether normal, even natural, and can help rally the public to its support. A second, parallel quest is the political quest for a system that guarantees universal access to healthcare for Americans. The ultimate success of this quest will depend not on any scientific or medical breakthrough, but on political will. An alternative literary device: the deployment of narratives of real Americans whose lives have been made much more miserable by the lack of access to decent healthcare, is more likely to create and sustain political support for universal healthcare. Literary devices—quest myths, metaphor, and narrative—used in relation to new technology and political change—can be employed for both ethical and unethical outcomes.The two quests in this story are converging in ways that may make them incompatible because of the extreme expense of personalized (genomic) medicine, and, at least so far, its inability to add more than marginal benefit to most Americans. Nonetheless, until Americans are more comfortable accepting death, we will continue to fight our mortality with activities we frame as quests, making our dysfunctional healthcare system less and less able to respond to the health needs of the American public.
Publication details
DOI: 10.1007/978-94-017-8816-8_20
Full citation:
Annas, G. J. (2014)., The songs of spring: quest myths, metaphors, and medical progress, in P. Macneill (ed.), Ethics and the arts, Dordrecht, Springer, pp. 225-233.
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