By Felan Parker
Where do we get our information about health and medical issues?How does this affect the medical care we receive?
These are important questions for Carleton University philosophy professor Rebecca Kukla, who is conducting research into what she calls “medical epistemology.” Epistemology is the study of knowledge and how knowledge is communicated, and so medical epistemology deals with the nature of knowledge about health and medical treatment.
In particular, Kukla is working with a team of women from a variety of fields including philosophy, psychology, science and obstetrics at universities across North America.
With these researchers from Duke, Princeton, and the University of Victoria, among others, she is examining how pregnancy risks (of miscarriage or abnormality, for example), are communicated to women. Often, according to Kukla, pregnant women are simply intimidated by the risk statistics they are given by doctors.
This is part of Kukla’s larger exploration into the methods of medical research used by everyday people. With the internet and other sources providing quick and easy access to information and support, our medical awareness is often informed by far more than just doctors.
In order to help people make autonomous, informed choices about medical care, Kukla says, we need to understand exactly how they are being informed.