ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book examines the alleged line between science and pseudo-science and the concept of evidence, which is clearly important to science. It explores the main attempts to define health as well as diseases and disabilities. The book focuses on the role of values in clinical and research medicine and shows that values are ineliminable in science and modern medicine with deep skepticism. Defensive medicine leads to the prescribing of tests and treatments that are of marginal use simply because physicians want to minimize possible legal exposure. Modern medicine is great because it works and it is based on science. Moreover, since medicine, like most empirical sciences, makes probabilistic claims, it ought to have a clear grasp of what it means when, say, people learn that a treatment has an 82% chance of success.
