Defining laboratory medicine: a circle cannot be squared

Lippi, Giuseppe; Plebani, Mario

At the down of the third millennium, it is rather misleading to consider the “whole population” as a conceptual entity, whereby the population is actually composed by single individuals, who differ broadly in terms of age, sex, ethnic origin, occupation, health, wellbeing, lifestyle and risk factors. While reaffirming strongly that laboratory medicine shall aim to provide data that could be translated into actionable information on “BOTH” an individual and universal level, we confute and refuse the naive and too simplistic approach that the common beneficence shall always be prioritized over the individual good, since the common good is just the sum of many individual beneficences.