Chapter 1.B.2--Medical Technology and Sociology

The latest on developments in medical technology can be found in Symposium, The Price of Medical Technology, 27(6)  Health Aff. (Nov. 2008).

Here are other views of what ``health'' and ``illness'' might mean:

[H]appiness meets all reasonable criteria for a psychiatric disorder. It is statistically abnormal and consists of a discrete cluster of symptoms. . . . [H]appiness is usually characterized by a positive mood, sometimes described as ``elation'' or ``joy,'' although this may be relatively absent in the milder happy states, sometimes termed ``contentment.'' The behavioral components of happiness . . . suggest that happy people are often carefree, impulsive, and unpredictable in their actions, . . . including a high frequency of recreational interpersonal contacts and prosocial actions toward others identified as less happy. . . . There is excellent experimental evidence that happy people are irrational. . . . Happy people have been shown to exhibit various biases of judgment that prevent them from acquiring a realistic understanding of their physical and social environment. . . . Acceptance of these arguments leads to the obvious conclusion that happiness should be included in future taxonomies of mental illness. . . . I humbly suggest that the term ``happiness'' be replaced by the more formal description major affective disorder, pleasant type, in the interests of scientific precision and in the hope of reducing any possible diagnostic ambiguities.

Richard P. Bentall, A Proposal to Classify Happiness as a Psychiatric Disorder, 18 J. Med. Ethics 94 (June 1992).

There was, until the end of the 18^th Century, a theory that insanity is due to possession by devils.  It was inferred that any pain suffered by the patient is also suffered by the devils, so that the best cure is to make the patient suffer so much that the devils will decide to abandon him.  The insane, in accordance with this theory were savagely beaten.  This treatment was tried on King George III when he was mad, but without success.  It is a curious and painful fact that almost all the completely futile treatments that have been believed in during the long history of medical folly have been such as caused acute suffering to the patient.

Bertrand Russell, An Outline of Intellectual Rubbish: A Hilarious Catalogue of Organized and Individual Stupidity 13 (Haldeman-Julius Publications, Girard, Kansas, 1943).


On the technological imperative, philosophy Hans Jonas has this to say, in “Philosophical Reflections on Human Experimentation,” 98 Daedalus 219, 245 (1969):

Let us not forget that progress is an optional goal, not an unconditional commitment, and that its tempo in particular, compulsive as it may become, has nothing sacred about it. Let us also remember that a slower progress in the conquest of disease would not threaten society, grievous as it is to those who have to deplore that their particular disease be not yet conquered, but that society would indeed be threatened by the erosion of those moral values whose loss, possibly caused by too ruthless a pursuit of scientific progress, would make its most dazzling triumphs not worth having.

See also Peter Conrad, The Medicalization of Society (2007).

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