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I want to pick up where I left off in Chap.  3. In some respects, it is peculiar that, in the face of the resounding backlash against "Big Ethics," as it was often called in the 1970s, some physicians continued to entertain the notion that philosophers should, and some of them argued must, become "involved" in clinical medicine. Around the same time (early 1980s) as Alan Fleischman was putting his program for residents in place, for instance, the pediatrician Tomas Silber stated his belief that without such actual, regular involvement in clinical affairs, what he termed the "data base" for understanding, much less contending productively with, the moral issues he regarded as inherent to the daily practice of at least pediatric medicine, would be plainly missing. Precisely that "base" is necessary, he argued, for the medical tasks at hand in any clinical situation. Thus, quite understandably, Silber lamented the "absence of these professionals"—that is, philosophers—"from our daily lives," although, with Siegler, he endorsed the idea that physicians must for their part immerse themselves in philosophy and theology (Silber TJ, Pediatric Ann 10:13–14, 1981).

DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-18332-9_5

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