Treating Infertility With Transplantation: Theological Views on Whether Infertility is a Disease

摘要

As a practice, medicine embeds itself within cultural, legal, economic, political, and religious contexts. It is an instrument that serves the perceived health-related needs of individuals and communities located within particular social contexts. Therefore the held values of patients and communities, and societal contexts they are located within, shape how medicine is practiced and how medical technology is applied. Applied bioethics deliberation, therefore, pays close attention to defining what the specific perceived health need is, and whether this need can be attended to by medicine and if so how best to do so. A perceived health need can be addressed in many ways; most notably by enacting policies and laws, through educational and social programs, and by medical interventions. Yet medicalization may ignore certain dimensions of the need and incompletely attend to others.