In a recently published article in Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics entitled, “‘Just Do Your Job’: Technology, Bureaucracy, and the Eclipse of Conscience in Contemporary Medicine,” former TMC Fellow Jacob A. Blythe and TMC co-director Dr. Farr Curlin examine the deleterious effects of the dominance of market metaphors in medical discourse. They argue that these metaphors betoken a carry-over to medical practice of various features from the institutions of technological production and bureaucratic administration–a process they call product presumption. Product presumption hides the essential features of medicine while foregrounding its accidental features, thereby confounding the public understanding of medicine and the professional achievement of the excellences most central to medical practice. They conclude by encouraging conscientious resistance to product presumption and the language it engenders. Jacob A. Blythe is a medical student at Stanford University. Dr. Farr Curlin is the Josiah C. Trent Professor of Medical Humanities at Duke Divinity School.

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