The Pros And Cons Of Medicalization

Preventative medicine comes with the potential for making our lives both better and worse. Today the world in which we live in has faced steady medicalization of daily existence. Many factors have contributed to the rise of medicalization. For instance the loss in religion, the increase of faith in science, rationality, progress, increased prestige and the power of the medical profession. The medical profession and the expansion of medical jurisdiction were prime movers for medicalization. Medicalization has also occurred through social movements. Doctors are not the only ones involved in medicalization now, patients are active collaborators in the medicalization of their problem. Critics try to argue for or against the idea that this leads to a favorable versus a non -favorable outcome. This increased establishment and development of medicine, including technoscience, has resulted in a major threat to health. The medicalization of normal conditions, risks the creation of medical diagnoses that are widely inclusive and that hold the potential for further expansion. Many biologically normal conditions, like shortness, menopause, and infertility, are currently considered medical problems. These naturally occurring states are now regarded as undesirable and deviant. This process is referred to as medicalization. Although they are considered deviant, however, the process of medicalization also removes culpability: a person’s problems can be ascribed to a chemical imbalance rather than seen as reflecting his or her character or accomplishments. Some of the articles I will be looking into are Dumit’s “Drugs for life” as well as Healy’s “Pharmageddon” and Cassel’s “Selling Sickness” to explore if this process of overmedicalization has le...

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...ng is, if the children are out of the norm or is society. Condition branding and disease awareness advertising are marketing practices that are increasingly being used by pharmaceutical industries. These have the potential to negatively impact a consumer. Their persuasive techniques keep improving to get a grasp on those consumers that don’t know any better. As helpful as advertisement companies think they may be, they may actually increase consumer fear and anxiety, and escalate doctor visits. People need to understand that the ideology that their bodies are a bundle of risks to be managed by drugs, is due to advertisement and pharmaceutical companies wanting to make profit. This is why these companies bank on further over-diagnosis and further treatment. It’s detrimental to consumers and I find no one else to blame but pharmaceutical advertisements and companies.