Page |140 To give a robust account for the own brains that mirrors (albeit at a level practice of medicine, one must explain attenuated by training and other why sick and debilitated strangers are contextual factors) the response we worthy of attention and care, and how would have if we were suffering the pain the medical arts contribute to human ourselves. These features of the human flourishing. For some Americans, such brain allow us to pay attention to and to accounts begin in secular moral some extent share in the suffering of tradition, but for most they begin in others—capacities that are psychological religion; nine out of ten Americans building blocks for caring for the sick. endorse a religious affiliation’. Either : = , . . Yet to explain medicine strictly way, medicine looks beyond science to ‘ a ; 7 : on the basis of empirical science, one find a vision that animates care of the . . . . must solve a particularly thorny version sick, a moral framework that guides the or ; of the more general problem of application of medical technology, and = a ait . . explaining altruistic human behavior. practices that nurture and extend the & . . Decety notes, “The emergence of human capacity to care for patients as : ._8 : : ‘ altruism, of empathizing with and caring persons rather than as mere objects. In f ~ ; . or those who are not kin, is ... not this sense, even though religious . . wy: ae easily explained within the framework of concepts are rarely made explicit in _ . . . . neo-Darwinian theories of natural public and professional discourse about +95 .. ae selection.” Indeed one can scarcely medicine, they are everywhere implicit : . . , and operative. and n “il imagine a practice less conducive to the Petative, ecessarily SO. reproductive fitness of a population than Why care for the sick? spending enormous resources caring for Humans in all cultures are moved thie ak the deformed. the we ak and the to care for the sick. The question is why? age ; d a at "h e