A major focus of the philosophy of medicine and, in general, of the
philosophy of science has been the interplay of facts and values.
Nowhere is an evaluation of this interplay more important than in the
ethics of diagnosis. Traditionally, diagnosis has been understood as an
epistemological activity which is concerned with facts and excludes the
intrusion of values. The essays in this volume challenge this
assumption. Questions of knowledge in diagnosis are intimately related
to the concerns with intervention that characterize the applied science
of medicine. Broad social and individual goals, as well as diverse
ethical frameworks, are shown to condition both the processes and
results of diagnosis. This has significant implications for bioethics,
implications that have not previously been developed. With this volume,
`the ethics of diagnosis' is established as an important branch of
bioethics.