Ideology in medical science: Class in the clinic

Steffie Woolhandler and David U. Himmelstein

Social Science & Medicine, 1989, vol. 28, issue 11, 1205-1209

Abstract: The class character of medicine is most easily discerned in the inequitable organization of health services. Capital's shaping of the patterns of disease and our medical/scientific responses is less apparent but equally strong. We illustrate this point by reviewing some recent history of cardiovascular diseases and therapies. Hitherto unknown afflictions have become commonplace. Our diagnostic and therapeutic concepts are the crystallization of a long history of scientific effort--an effort dominated and directed by capitalist imperatives. The work of the clinician rests on this scientific substrate, and recognition or rejection of its class nature provides a potential basis for a new medical science but not the needed results. The socialist transformation of medicine will require a recognition of the capitalist specificity of current science, and the painstaking construction of alternative modes of thought.

Keywords: cardiovascular; diseases; hypertension; medical; ideology; Marxism (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1989
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0277-9536(89)90013-0
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:socmed:v:28:y:1989:i:11:p:1205-1209

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/supportfaq.cws_home/regional
http://www.elsevier. ... _01_ooc_1&version=01

Access Statistics for this article

Social Science & Medicine is currently edited by Ichiro (I.) Kawachi and S.V. (S.V.) Subramanian

More articles in Social Science & Medicine from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().