["Medicine of desire" between commercialization and patient-centeredness].

[DEFINITION OF THE PROBLEM] Ample evidence points to an emerging new self-understanding within medical practice, away from the established goals of medicine towards greater responsiveness to individual preferences.

[ARGUMENTS] The altered self-understanding of medical practice unfettered by indications grounded in concepts of disease can be conceptually characterized as desire-driven medicine, or "medicine of desire." This raises the question of morally justifiable limits for the normative governance of a medicine of desire.

[CONCLUSION] In liberal societies, only two forms of argumentation seem promising for setting limits to the provision and consumption of what a medicine of desire has to offer: Arguments that place expected benefit into the perspective of risks, and arguments that probe the coherence of desires and their fulfillment against the background of a person's conception of a good life for that person.