ArticleMedical humanities2021
The illness-disease dichotomy and the biological-clinical splitting of medicine.
Article in Medical humanities, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 9 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
9 citing papers in PubMed, 25 citations in OpenAlex.
- From Disease to Illness: Reframing Periodontitis Through an Anthropological Lens.Journal of periodontal research · 2026Review
- Patients' experiences of living with Long Covid and their beliefs about the role of psychology in their condition.Journal of health psychology · 2025Article
- Physical and Rehabilitation Medicine: say relational or functional, not holistic.European journal of physical and rehabilitation medicine · 2024Article
- Global statements to produce and implement evidence in the post-COVID-19 era provide a path forward for rehabilitation: A joint initiative of Cochrane Rehabilitation and the leading journals in the field.Musculoskeletal science & practice · 2022Article
- Global statements to produce and implement evidence in the post-COVID-era provide a path forward for rehabilitation - A joint initiative of Cochrane Rehabilitation and the leading journals in the field.Journal of rehabilitation medicine · 2022Article
- Global statements to produce and implement evidence in the post-COVID-19 era provide a path forward for rehabilitation. A joint initiative of Cochrane Rehabilitation and the leading journals in the field.European journal of physical and rehabilitation medicine · 2022Article
- Global statements to produce and implement evidence in the post-COVID-19 era provide a path forward for rehabilitation - A joint initiative of Cochrane Rehabilitation and the leading journals in the field.Journal of occupational rehabilitation · 2022Article
- Global statements to produce and implement evidence in the post-COVID-19 era provide a path forward for rehabilitation - A joint initiative of Cochrane Rehabilitation and the leading journals in the field.Annals of physical and rehabilitation medicine · 2022Article
- Efficacy of Repetitive Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation for Acute Central Post-stroke Pain: A Case Study.Frontiers in neurology · 2021Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
2 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
In a recent paper, Sharpe and Greco (2019) argue that some clinical conditions, such as chronic fatigue syndrome (sometimes called myalgic encephalomyelitis), should be treated by altering the patient's experience and response to symptoms without necessarily searching for an underlying cause. As a result, we should allow for the existence of 'illnesses without (underlying) diseases'. Wilshire and Ward (2019) reply that this possibility requires unwarranted causal assumptions about the psychosocial origins of conditions not predicted by a disease model. In so doing, it is argued that Sharpe and Greco introduce epistemological and methodological problems with serious medical consequences, for example, patients feel guilt for seeking treatment for illnesses that only exist 'all in the mind', and medical researchers are discouraged from looking for more effective treatments of such conditions. We propose a view that integrates the insights of both papers. We abandon both the strict distinction between disease and illness and the naïve unidirectional account of causality that accompanies it. This, we claim, is a step towards overcoming the current harmful tendencies to conceptually separate (1) Symptom management and disease-modifying treatments. (2) Rehabilitative-palliative care and 'causal' curing. (3) Most importantly, biomedicine and clinical medicine, where the latter is currently at risk of losing its status as scientific.
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What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.