Title: Medicalization
Subtitle: An Encroachment on Consent, Culture, and Society
Subject Classification: Bioethics, Law and Legal Ethics, Healthcare, Politics and Government
BIC Classification: PSAD, MBDC, LNTM
BISAC Classification: LAW093000, MED050000, SOC057000
Binding: Hardback, pp.(to be confirmed)
Planned Publication date: December 2023
ISBN (printed book): 978-1-80441-197-1
ISBN (web pdf): 978-1-80441-198-8

Price: £79.99

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Description

This book examines the phenomenon of medicalization and the increasingly large, invasive, and coercive role of medicine in society. Medicine today impinges territory formerly left to families, parents, society, and social and economic policy. Expanding disease definitions and allowing ever-milder conditions to qualify for medicine,  ‘disease creep’, influences public policy and social behavior. Medicalization redirects those experiencing stress, sadness, or distraction to medicine, and impacts how society defines health and wellness. Medicalization in the contexts of diet, lifestyle, education and athletics, growing old, public safety, and mental and physical health, are all explored. Medicalization has adverse consequences both in that it may demonize those who do not go along, and it offers a false promise to remedy non-medical problems with a simple pill.

The pharmaceutical industry profits from disease creep, and doctors are  complicit in furthering a narrative that relies on medicine. Laws often support a medical approach to societal problems despite notable financial conflicts of interest.

Written in a clear and accessible style, Medicalization is a valuable addition to the literature on bioethics, law, health policy, social sciences, and political studies.

Biography

Author: Anne S. Zimmerman is an attorney with a JD from Fordham University School of Law and an MS in bioethics from Columbia University in New York, USA. She is the founder of modernbioethics.com, the Editor-in-Chief of Voices in Bioethics, Columbia University’s bioethics journal, Chair of the New York City Bar Association Bioethical Issues Committee, and Co-Chair and Co-Founder of the Bioethics Forum of the Collaborative for Palliative Care. In her earlier legal career, she worked in corporate governance and criminal justice reform. Her recent book, Medicine, Power, and the Law: Exploring a Pipeline to Injustice explores the relationships between medicine, science, and technology and the criminal and civil justice systems.

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