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Abstract:
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The contemporary explanations and discussions of
the relationship between medicine and health, and society
centre around assumptions that can be broadly classified
into three setsl.
The first set considers health and illness as
predominantly ‘biological’ and therefore, having nothing to
do with the social and economic environment in which it
occurs. The struggle to combat illness therefore, lies
entirely within the purview of modern medicine which is
neutral to economic or social change.
The second considers practice of medicine as a
natural science. It allows the doctor to separate himself
from his subject matter, the patient, in the samelway as the
natural scientist is assumed to separate himself from his subject matter, the natural world. As a 'science' and with
the scientific method, it can produce unchallengable and
autonomous body of knowledge which is free from the wider
social and economic context.
The third, different from the above, recognises
the relationship between health, medicine and society.
Social and environmental aspects as determinants of illness
or of health comes to sharp focus here and it assigns to
medicine the status of a mediator, the only viable mediator,
between people and diseases. In this scheme of things the
usefulness of medicine is unquestionable but the problem
lies in not having enough of it to go arounds. |