TY - JOUR T1 - Can evidence-based medicine implicitly rely on current concepts of disease or does it have to develop its own definition? JF - Journal of Medical Ethics JO - J Med Ethics SP - 394 LP - 399 DO - 10.1136/jme.2006.017913 VL - 33 IS - 7 AU - Andreas Gerber AU - Frieder Hentzelt AU - Karl W Lauterbach Y1 - 2007/07/01 UR - http://jme.bmj.com/content/33/7/394.abstract N2 - Decisions in healthcare are made against the background of cultural and philosophical definitions of disease, sickness and illness. These concepts or definitions affect both health policy (macro level) and research (meso level), as well as individual encounters between patients and physicians (micro level). It is therefore necessary for evidence-based medicine to consider whether any of the definitions underlying research prior to the hierarchisation of knowledge are indeed compatible with its own epistemological principles. ER -