Medical Borders

Historical, Political, and Cultural Analyses

Datos Bibliográficos

ID4516162
AutoresNadav Davidovitch (0000-0001-5709-9265, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev), Rakefet Zalashik (New York University)
Año2006
Volumen19
Número3
Páginas309-316
Fecha de publicación2006-09-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaScience in Context (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0269-8897 • E-ISSN: 1474-0664
EditorialCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s0269889706000949
OpenAlexW2108370364
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas4
Referencias citadas4

Scientific medicine carries within it an inherent contradiction. On the one hand, given its general scientific inquiry into health and disease, their conditions, etiologies, and treatments, it makes a claim for universality. To justify this claim, at different times and in different places, scientific medicine has prioritized techniques such as the medical gaze and autopsies to assure its diagnoses; it has applied numerical methods in order to have a better grasp of diseases and their possible treatments; it has used laboratory analyses in order to understand life at its molecular level; and more recently it has introduced Randomized Clinical Trials (RCT) in order to generalize clinical treatments. On the other hand, contrary to its universalistic claims, scientific medicine sets up and reifies boundaries. It creates distinctions between the healthy and the sick and defines categories, such as gender and race, that have deep political and social meanings

Contradiction · Epistemology · Germ theory of disease · GRASP · Medical diagnosis · Pathology · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Universality (dynamical systems · Biomedical Ethics and Regulation · Computer Science · Global Public Health Policies and Epidemiology · Law · Medicine · Philosophy · Psychology