Introduction: The Bioethics of Malingering, Misrepresentation of Health, and Forensics of Illness

There is a long history of inventing illness to avoid a difficult situation, for example, women faking pregnancy to avoid punishment for a crime, at least for the short term. In other cases, people pretend to be ill to gain attention, such as elderly persons who fake illness to gain access to food and shelter. The opposite—accusing someone of being ill when they are not—also has a long history. People accuse others of being sick or ill when they do not hold the same principles, norms, or values as those of the accuser. Furthermore, performative aspects of health conditions lend themselves to being reproduced: Beggars pretend with bad breath and painted sores to have “leprosy” or with a bandaged leg and crutches to be lame. When those elements are incorrect, when the lame man can limp away without crutches, the public may doubt the person is in need of assistance. This volume touches on all aspects of illness as something invented and contrived, inflicted and claimed, and attributed and labeled. The chapters cover topics from Antiquity to the late twentieth century on issues from conceptualizing malingering to case studies to regulations and laws governing malingering and malingerers.