The Clinic & The Person
The Clinic & The Person is a podcast bringing knowledge and perspectives from the humanities to certain aspects of biomedicine. “The Clinic” represents all that biomedicine brings to bear on diseases and treatments, and “The Person” represents all that people go through with health problems. Our episodes draw from works in the humanities—any genre—directly related to how people are affected by specific clinical events such as migraine headaches, epileptic seizures, and dementia, and by specific health care situations such as restricted access to care and gut-wrenching, life and death choices. We analyze and interpret featured works and provide thoughts on their applications in patient care; health professions education; clinical and population research; health care policy; and social and cultural trends and preoccupations. Often joining us are the creators of works we feature or experts on the topics we select.
The Clinic & The Person
Against Medical Nihilism Through Perseverance and Humility with Dr Ross Upshur
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For thousands of years, the value of medical treatments of the day was disparaged with some frequency mostly in the form of quips from prominent people in health care, the arts, government, and social commentary. More recently, the quips evolved into formal philosophical arguments conveying a view that the likelihood of any new medical treatment becoming a major breakthrough is low. The term “medical nihilism” is now associated with this view.
In this episode, with the physician and philosopher Ross Upshur, we cover medical nihilism conceptually and assess how well the term fits the arguments underlying it. We discuss some of the components comprising the arguments, which are generally real, and how they can contribute to medical nihilism, and validate the uncertainty existing in medicine for some. We talk further about how to accept this uncertainty and manage our health care decisions as providers, educators, and consumers without falling into the despair of medical nihilism.
Note that throughout the episode, we mention Jacob Stegenga and his book, Medical Nihilism, and also Jonathan Fuller and his book, The New Modern Medicine. We mention Ross Upshur and Maya Goldenberg’s article, Countering Medical Nihilism by Reconnecting Facts and Values in Studies in History and Philosophy of Science. Citations for each are listed below.
Primary Sources
Upshur, Ross, and Maya J. Goldenberg. "Countering Medical Nihilism by Reconnecting Facts and Values." Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A, vol. 84, Dec. 2020, pp. 75–83. (Available as pdf at Maya Goldenberg’s website.)
Stegenga, Jacob. Medical Nihilism. Oxford University Press, 2020.
Fuller, Jonathan. The New Modern Medicine: Disease, Evidence, and Epidemiological Medicine. Oxford University Press, 2025, academic.oup.com/book/61541. (Available as open access at Oxford University Press.)
Links
Biosketch for our guest Dr. Ross Upshur
FDA list of recalls, market withdrawals, and safety alerts.
Attributions
For audio clip:
From Atonement by Ian McEwan, read by Jill Tanner. Audiobook. [Recorded Books, 2002]. Accessed via Spotify.
Episode image:
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr
Credit: Oliver Wendell Holmes. Colour lithograph by Sir L. Ward [Spy], 1886. Wellcome Collection. Source: Wellcome Collection. License: Public Domain Mark.
Please send us comments, recommendations, and questions to fan mail link above, or email to: russell.teagarden@gmail.com.
Thanks to Dr. Ross Upshur for his interesting and insightful contributions to this episode.
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