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medpundit |
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Friday, April 12, 2002“Although some forces -the internet and patients' empowerment- might offer opportunities for "de-medicalisation," many others encourage greater medicalisation. Patients and their professional advocacy groups can gain moral and financial benefit from having their condition defined as a disease. Doctors, particularly some specialists, may welcome the boost to status, influence, and income that comes when new territory is defined as medical. Advances in genetics open up the possibility of defining almost all of us as sick, by diagnosing the "deficient" genes that predispose us to disease.Global pharmaceutical companies have a clear interest in medicalising life's problems, and there is now an ill for every pill. Likewise companies manufacturing mammography equipment or tests for prostate specific antigen can grow rich on the medicalisation of risk. Many journalists and editors still delight in mindless medical formulas, where fear mongering about the latest killer disease is accompanied by news of the latest wonder drug. Governments may even welcome some of society's problems - within, for example, criminal justice - being redefined as medical, with the possibility of new solutions.” There is certainly pressure to use more and more drugs for more and more conditions, not only from patients requesting specific drugs that they’ve seen advertised, but from within the medical profession itself. We are expected to meet certain measureable standards in disease control and prevention of conditions that could be modified by diligent lifestyle changes on the part of the patient - for example in diabetes or in cholesterol management. Human nature being what it is, however, the diligence is wanting, and to achieve the desired goal physicians must turn to medication. I find it unsettling to have to use three or four drugs to get acceptable blood sugar or cholesterol values when I know the person taking those drugs isn’t making any effort to reign in his appetite, but it happens all the time. posted by Sydney on 4/12/2002 05:49:00 AM 0 comments 0 Comments: |
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