Incisively written, this new edition of a popular guide first published in 1996 slices through the rhetoric of health promotion. Its penetrating analysis quickly reveals health promotion’s conceptual roots, providing an enlightening map of their web of theory and practice. David Seedhouse proves that health promotion, a discipline intended to improve the health of a population, is prejudiced—every plan and every project stems first from human values—and argues that only by acknowledging this will a mature discipline emerge. To help speed (...) progress the author proposes a positive, practical theory of health promotion destined to inspire anyone who wishes to create better health. This new edition includes three new chapters on conventional health promotion, radical and foundational health promotion and mental health promotion, providing examples of the use of foundational health promotion. This new edition also adds five new teaching exercises, incorporates and updates the guide for teachers and lecturers and includes a new topical case study. This book is laced with entertaining dialogues and readers are encouraged to explore ten carefully presented exercises. Educational, accessible and intelligent, Health Promotion: Philosophy, Prejudice and Practice, 2nd Edition is a seminal work which heralds the beginning of the end of health promotion’s long adolescence. It is nothing less than essential reading for all practitioners and students of health promotion. (shrink)

A number of recent publications by the philosopher David Seedhouse are discussed. Although medicine is an eminently ethical enterprise, the technical and ethical aspects of health care practices can be distinguished, therefore justifying the existence of medical ethics and its teaching as a specific part of every medical curriculum. The goal of teaching medical ethics is to make health care practitioners aware of the essential ethical aspects of their work. Furthermore, the contention that rational bioethics is a fruitless enterprise because (...) it analyses non-rational social events seems neither theoretically tenable nor to be borne out by actual practice. Medical ethics in particular and bioethics in general, constitute a field of expertise that must make itself understandable and convincing to relevant audiences in health care. (shrink)

Bioethicists are increasingly commenting on health care resource allocation, and sometimes suggest ways to solve various rationing dilemmas ethically. I argue that both because of the assumptions bioethicists make about social reality, and because of the methods of argument they use, they cannot possibly make a useful contribution to the debate. Bioethicists who want to make a practical difference should either approach health care resource allocation as if the matter hinged upon tribal competition (which is essentially what it does), or (...) they should do political philosophy in the traditional sense, and examine the health system from the outside. (shrink)

This paper responds to Dr Cassell's request for a fuller explanation of my argument in the paper, Against medical ethics: a philosopher's view. A distinction is made between two accounts of ethics in general, and the philosophical basis of health work ethics is briefly stated. The implications of applying this understanding of ethics to medical education are discussed.