Pharmacracy: Medicine and Politics in America

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http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0275971961/ref=ase_masternewmedi/102-2352\

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Book Review

 

Pharmacracy: Medicine and Politics in America

by Thomas Szasz (Author)

 

Editorial Reviews

 

From Publishers Weekly

Nearly 40 years after psychiatrist Karl Menninger called the medical profession

on the carpet for misnaming medical conditions so that various forms of

treatment could be justified and, 24 years later, Susan Sontag declared that

" illnesses have always been used as metaphors to enliven charges that a society

was corrupt or unjust, " noted and controversial psychiatrist Szasz (Fatal

Freedom), as lively and contentious as ever, pursues similar lines of thought,

examining the medicalization of politics and the politics of medicine in

contemporary America. At the base of what he calls our modern " pharmacracy " a

state where " all sorts of human problems are transformed into diseases and the

rule of law extends into the rule of medicine " stands a virulent

misunderstanding of disease, in the " literal " or scientific sense. It is, he

argues in accord with the theories of 19th-century pathologist Rudolf Virchow,

very simply an injury or abnormality in the cells, tissues or organs of the

body.

Yet, he maintains, the medical profession and politicians have today named as

diseases a wide range of human behaviors, from alcoholism and obesity to mental

illness and infertility. Moreover, some of these metaphorical diseases are

elevated to public health problems subject to government intervention; thus, in

Szasz's view, America has created a contemporary fascist health state in which

its campaigns aimed at the eradication of smoking and obesity focus not on the

responsibility of individuals to quit smoking or to lose weight but on the

promise that well-funded research agendas will solve the problem. Plenty of

health-care professionals and politicians will disagree with Szasz's definition

of disease and his condemnation of the modern " pharmacracy, " but no reader can

put down this book without having been disturbed, provoked and challenged to see

the American medical profession in a new light.

 

 

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

 

 

 

From Booklist

The idiom, imagery, and technology of medicine have been taken over by politics

and society, says longtime dissident psychiatrist Szasz, and that has

essentially broadened and weakened the concept of disease. Bureaucrats have

supplanted pathologists, and bioethicists have obfuscated the scientific

approach. Szasz emphasizes the resultant dangers, especially those stemming from

the forceful social influence of psychiatry and the burgeoning domain of mental

illness. The current biopsychosocial... read more

 

 

Book Description

In recent decades, American medicine has become increasingly politicized and

politics has become increasingly medicalized. Behaviors previously seen as

virtuous or wicked, wise or unwise are now dealt with as " healthy " or

" sick " --unwanted behaviors to be controlled as if they were public health

issues. The modern penchant for transforming human problems into " diseases " and

judicial sanctions into " treatments, " replacing the rule of law with the rule of

medical discretion, leads to a type of government social critic Thomas Szasz

calls " pharmacracy. " This insidious political development is eroding our

personal liberties while distorting our approach to both health care and

politics.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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