Biomedicine May Not Be the Answer

Biomedicine is not the only approach to healthcare. And as the readings for this week show, the “western” approach to medicine may actually be working at the benefit of the capitalist system but at the expense of our healthcare. Janet McKee offers a very compelling critique of Western medicine, stating basically that the Western approach encourages individuals to fix their own problems by buying drugs and consuming healthcare. In effect, this turns our health into a commodity to be bought. This obviously fits nicely into a capitalist system, one that is built upon the owning class profiting from the exploitation of everyone else. Furthermore, as McKee notes, this view ignores the social factors (distal causes, or fundamental causes, of disease) and focuses solely on the individuals fixing themselves.

However, as the other articles for this week demonstrate, holistic views of medicine fail to address social causes as well, but they offer a well-rounded view of individuals that focus their healthcare on prevention as well as intervention. As Chan, Ho, and Chow make clear, a “body-mind-spirit” model of healthcare works to help an entire person, rather than their specific ailment. Full disclosure here, I’ve never tried this type of healthcare. I’ve only ever gone to doctors who have degrees in medicine, so my opinion on this is somewhat slanted. But I can see the value in treating an entire person as opposed to just treating a specific illness. Placing a value on healing people without exploiting them seems like a good deal to me. Similarly, Adib’s article also emphasizes the spiritual aspect of healthcare.

But all of these articles have the underlying message that western medicine is still the dominant system of healthcare. We have been socialized to believe that a biomedical approach to medicine is “right”, but maybe (and this may be the cynical socialist in me talking) we’ve been socialized by the very healthcare companies who profit from this biomedical approach.

A big story in the news recently has been surrounding Martin Shkreli, the pharmaceutical exec who charged exorbitant rates for a drug that could fight AIDS, and when he was questioned by congress about it, he continuously pled the fifth. Read this article if you want to get super mad about it: http://www.vox.com/2016/2/4/10915190/congressional-hearing-drug-prices-shkreli

The point of reminding you all about this total jackass is not just to get everyone pissed, but to point out that what he is doing is completely legal. We are right now living in a healthcare system where drug prices are set by companies, and we’ve been taught to believe that we absolutely need drugs to get over illnesses. There are definitely advantages to a biomedical approach to medicine, but not with the system that we have right now. Our current system benefits the producers of drugs (Martin Skreli, lookin’ at you) and punishes those who seek those drugs. And all the while, those drugs do nothing to treat the fundamental causes of illness, those structural inequalities that are taken for granted in the country and increasingly in the world that we live in. Smith’s article directly points to the focus on western medicine in other parts of the world. And this all relates to the unstoppable system of global capitalism. Western medicine is spreading because American and European countries have political and economic power throughout the world. Maybe a move away from biomedicine won’t stop rising global inequality, but more and more studies are showing the benefits of “positive thinking” and the placebo effect. And so maybe a biomedical approach isn’t the only valid way to address healthcare.