ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book explains the critique of the praxis of Evidence Based Medicine (EBM) applied to anticipatory healthcare under capitalism. It aims to the way EBM – the application of science and its experimental methods to determine what constitutes good care – combines both theory and practice. The book includes the term anticipation to medical or healthcare practices that identify individual characteristics said to predict threats to future health that can be taken in hand in advance by treatment. In addition, by anticipatory care it refers to care that anticipates future suffering of a kind not present at the time of anticipation. The book is concerned with the knowledge that warrants the praxis of anticipatory healthcare. It provides the existing social reality that decides how effective truth, or normative knowledge.
