[The concept of complementary and alternative medicine from the perspective of the philosophy of science and bioethics]. / Komplementär- und Alternativmedizin: der Begriff im Licht wissenschaftstheoretischer und -ethischer Überlegungen.

Decisions about therapeutic interventions to be made by physicians, patients, and healthcare purchasers essentially depend on their classification in a credible context of justification, especially in a world dominated by contradicting experts. To some extent, this framing is done by sorting terms and their undertones, including the case of so-called CAM measures. In this paper, the authors reflect on ways to deal with the term CAM and the underlying supply-side approaches to healthcare from a primarily science-oriented perspective.

"Disease entity" as the key theoretical concept of medicine.

Philosophical debates about the concept of disease, particularly of mental disease, might benefit from reconsideration and a closer look at the established terminology and conceptual structure of contemporary medical pathology and clinical nosology. The concepts and principles of medicine differ, to a considerable extent, from the ideas and notions of philosophical theories of disease. In medical theory, the concepts of disease entity and pathologicity are, besides the concept of disease itself, of fundamental importance, and they are essentially connected to the concepts cause of disease or etiological factor, natural course or natural history of disease, and pathological disposition. It is the concept of disease entity that is of key importance for understanding medical pathology and theory of disease. Its central role is shown by a short reconstruction of its main features and its intrinsic connection to the concept of pathologicity. The meaning of pathologicity is elucidated by explicating the underlying criteria.