Page |139 co Social Brain, Spiritual Medicine? fs) . S Os No one ever asks what science aps ees ‘Sie has to do with medicine any more than pat len iS Beh aces i religious they ask what books have to do with 24 siGker! Shee 2D) diel fimesoattention education or what tools have to do with HES vision Semel et ioe OME . 11Ca bag mor a |= . Saringiieeses. gl ES&rohcmnieSOCIal LOT al carpentry. Before the middle of the 19th pee OE monet) Reet on OTF a provideys PUPPY, & Contribute another . vs iD saem sa Se oss ond ’ century, there was almost nothing that humans EE learn qliraim Ghigeen SA 2 Js ‘ Sat ma a YY 1edicine physicians, however well intended, Chapter 151° could do to actually restore health to the ill. Modern science changed that. Over the past century and a half, dramatic 15 The lead author is Fart A. Curlin, MD., a improvements in health outcomes have hospice and palliative care physician, researcher, been wrought through the application of and medical ethicist at the University of sterile surgery techniques, specialized Chicago. His empirical research charts the hospital care, public health measures to influence of physicians’ moral traditions and prevent the spread of infectious diseases, commitments, both religious and secular, on Per . earner ; . antibiotics to treat those diseases, and physicians' clinical practices. As an ethicist he : : addresses questions regarding whether and in myriad subsequent technologies. All of what ways physicians' religious commitments these have been undergirded by the ought to shape their clinical practices in our discoveries of biomedical science. plural democracy. Curlin and colleagues have . . authored numerous manuscripts published in the As a result, the life expectancy in medicine and bioethics literatures, including a developed nations has doubled. People New England Journal of Medicine paper titled, live not only longer but with much less Religion, Conscience and Controversial disability. Diseases that formerly Clinic