Book ID: CBB585442811

To Fix or To Heal: Patient Care, Public Health, and the Limits of Biomedicine (2016)

unapi

Davis, Joseph E. (Editor)
González, Ana Marta (Editor)


New York University Press


Publication Date: 2016
Physical Details: 352 pp.
Language: English

Do doctors fix patients? Or do they heal them? For all of modern medicine’s many successes, discontent with the quality of patient care has combined with a host of new developments, from aging populations to the resurgence of infectious diseases, which challenge medicine’s overreliance on narrowly mechanistic and technical methods of explanation and intervention, or “fixing’ patients. The need for a better balance, for more humane “healing” rationales and practices that attend to the social and environmental aspects of health and illness and the experiencing person, is more urgent than ever. Yet, in public health and bioethics, the fields best positioned to offer countervailing values and orientations, the dominant approaches largely extend and reinforce the reductionism and individualism of biomedicine. The collected essays in To Fix or To Heal do more than document the persistence of reductionist approaches and the attendant extension of medicalization to more and more aspects of our lives. The contributors also shed valuable light on why reductionism has persisted and why more holistic models, incorporating social and environmental factors, have gained so little traction. The contributors examine the moral appeal of reductionism, the larger rationalist dream of technological mastery, the growing valuation of health, and the enshrining of individual responsibility as the seemingly non-coercive means of intervention and control. This paradigm-challenging volume advances new lines of criticism of our dominant medical regime, even while proposing ways of bringing medical practice, bioethics, and public health more closely into line with their original goals. Precisely because of the centrality of the biomedical approach to our society, the contributors argue, challenging the reductionist model and its ever-widening effects is perhaps the best way to press for a much-needed renewal of our ethical and political discourse.

...More
Reviewed By

Review Joel D. Howell (2018) Review of "To Fix or To Heal: Patient Care, Public Health, and the Limits of Biomedicine". Bulletin of the History of Medicine (pp. 230-231). unapi

Review Harold Braswell (2018) Review of "To Fix or To Heal: Patient Care, Public Health, and the Limits of Biomedicine". Social History of Medicine (pp. 197-198). unapi

Includes Chapters

Chapter Joseph E. Davis (2016) Introduction: Holism against Reductionism. In: To Fix or To Heal: Patient Care, Public Health, and the Limits of Biomedicine (pp. 1-30). unapi

Chapter LUIS E. ECHARTE (2016) After Medicine: The Cosmetic Pull of Neuroscience. In: To Fix or To Heal: Patient Care, Public Health, and the Limits of Biomedicine (pp. 84-109). unapi

Chapter ANA MARTA GONZÁLEZ (2016) In Search of an Ethical Frame for the Provision of Health. In: To Fix or To Heal: Patient Care, Public Health, and the Limits of Biomedicine (pp. 284-306). unapi

Chapter ROBERT DINGWALL (2016) Reductionism, Holism, and Consumerism: The Patient in Contemporary Medicine. In: To Fix or To Heal: Patient Care, Public Health, and the Limits of Biomedicine (pp. 110-130). unapi

Chapter JEFFREY P. BISHOP (2016) The Dominion of Medicine: Bioethics, the Human Sciences, and the Humanities. In: To Fix or To Heal: Patient Care, Public Health, and the Limits of Biomedicine (pp. 263-283). unapi

Chapter JOHN H. EVANS (2016) Bioethics and Medicalization. In: To Fix or To Heal: Patient Care, Public Health, and the Limits of Biomedicine (pp. 241-262). unapi

Chapter ANNE HARDY (2016) After the Therapeutic Revolution: The Return to Prevention in Medical Policy and Practice. In: To Fix or To Heal: Patient Care, Public Health, and the Limits of Biomedicine (pp. 133-151). unapi

Chapter JON ARRIZABALAGA (2016) The Global Threat of (Re)emerging Diseases: Contesting the Adequacy of Biomedical Discourse and Practice. In: To Fix or To Heal: Patient Care, Public Health, and the Limits of Biomedicine (pp. 177-207). unapi

Chapter DEBORAH LUPTON (2016) Digitized Health Promotion: Risk and Personal Responsibility for Health and Illness in the Web 2.0 Era. In: To Fix or To Heal: Patient Care, Public Health, and the Limits of Biomedicine (pp. 152-176). unapi

Chapter Joseph E. Davis (2016) Conclusion: Limits in the Interest of Healing. In: To Fix or To Heal: Patient Care, Public Health, and the Limits of Biomedicine (pp. 307-320). unapi

Chapter BRUCE K. ALEXANDER (2016) Replacing the Official View of Addiction. In: To Fix or To Heal: Patient Care, Public Health, and the Limits of Biomedicine (pp. 208-238). unapi

Chapter CHRISTINA SIMKO (2016) The Problem of Suffering in the Age of Prozac: A Case Study of the Depression Memoir. In: To Fix or To Heal: Patient Care, Public Health, and the Limits of Biomedicine (pp. 63-83). unapi

Chapter Joseph E. Davis (2016) Reductionist Medicine and Its Cultural Authority. In: To Fix or To Heal: Patient Care, Public Health, and the Limits of Biomedicine (pp. 33-62). unapi

Citation URI
https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB585442811/

Similar Citations

Chapter Joseph E. Davis; (2016)
Reductionist Medicine and Its Cultural Authority (/isis/citation/CBB110614787/)

Article Giuseppe Armocida; Ilaria Gorini; (2017)
The dialogue between the worlds of art and science (/isis/citation/CBB394057662/)

Book Peter N. Stearns; (2020)
The Routledge History of Death since 1800 (/isis/citation/CBB965518317/)

Book Vittorio Alessandro Sironi; (2021)
Le maschere della salute: Dal Rinascimento ai tempi del coronavirus (/isis/citation/CBB761112821/)

Article Cinzia Leone; (2020)
Medicine and disability: historical perspective (/isis/citation/CBB644226976/)

Article Andersen, Hanne; (2001)
The history of reductionism versus holistic approaches to scientific research (/isis/citation/CBB000100425/)

Chapter Joseph E. Davis; (2016)
Introduction: Holism against Reductionism (/isis/citation/CBB984513451/)

Article Souza, Eduardo F. Alexander Amaral de; Luz, Madel Therezinha; (2009)
Bases socioculturais das práticas terapêuticas alternativas (/isis/citation/CBB000932955/)

Chapter Rossella Maspoli; (2021)
Evolution, role and potential of public baths in the post-Fordist western city (/isis/citation/CBB415929509/)

Article Lefkaditou, Ageliki; Stamou, George P.; (2006)
Holism and Reductionism in Ecology: A Trivial Dichotomy and Levins' Non-trivial Account (/isis/citation/CBB000774683/)

Article Howard Phillips; (2020)
’17, ’18, ’19: religion and science in three pandemics, 1817, 1918, and 2019 (/isis/citation/CBB296469942/)

Book Hardy, Anne; (2001)
Health and Medicine in Britain Since 1860 (/isis/citation/CBB000102017/)

Chapter BRUCE K. ALEXANDER; (2016)
Replacing the Official View of Addiction (/isis/citation/CBB026373400/)

Book Haller, John S.; (2011)
Sectarian Reformers in American Medicine, 1800--1910 (/isis/citation/CBB001251085/)

Book Fontani, Marco; Costa, Mariagrazia; Orna, Mary Virginia; (2015)
The Lost Elements: The Periodic Table's Shadow Side (/isis/citation/CBB001551085/)

Article A. Kuts; M. Poluektov; C. L. A. Bassetti; (2021)
The evolution of the narcolepsy concept in Russia: A historical view (/isis/citation/CBB200785759/)

Authors & Contributors
Davis, Joseph E.
Poluektov, M.
Bassetti, C. L. A.
Kuts, A.
Maspoli, Rossella
Gorini, Ilaria
Concepts
Medicine and culture
Medicine and society
Holism
Medicine
Reductionism
Development of science; change in science
Time Periods
19th century
20th century
21st century
20th century, early
Early modern
Renaissance
Places
United States
Great Britain
Florence (Italy)
Russia
Comments

Be the first to comment!

{{ comment.created_by.username }} on {{ comment.created_on | date:'medium' }}

Log in or register to comment