Kaczmarek Emilia
Ethics Department, Center for Bioethics and Biolaw, Institute of Philosophy, University of Warsaw, ul. Krakowskie Przedmieście 3, 00-097, Warsaw, Poland.
Med Health Care Philos. 2019 Mar;22(1):119-128. doi: 10.1007/s11019-018-9850-1.
Is medicalization always harmful? When does medicine overstep its proper boundaries? The aim of this article is to outline the pragmatic criteria for distinguishing between medicalization and over-medicalization. The consequences of considering a phenomenon to be a medical problem may take radically different forms depending on whether the problem in question is correctly or incorrectly perceived as a medical issue. Neither indiscriminate acceptance of medicalization of subsequent areas of human existence, nor criticizing new medicalization cases just because they are medicalization can be justified. The article: (i) identifies various consequences of both well-founded medicalization and over-medicalization; (ii) demonstrates that the issue of defining appropriate limits of medicine cannot be solved by creating an optimum model of health; (iii) proposes four guiding questions to help distinguish medicalization from over-medicalization. The article should foster a normative analysis of the phenomenon of medicalization and contribute to the bioethical reflection on the boundaries of medicine.
医学化总是有害的吗？医学何时会超越其适当的界限？本文的目的是概述区分医学化和过度医学化的实用标准。将一种现象视为医学问题的后果可能会因该问题被正确或错误地视为医学问题而呈现出截然不同的形式。对人类生存后续领域的医学化既不能不加区分地接受，也不能仅仅因为是医学化就批评新的医学化案例。本文：（i）确定了有充分依据的医学化和过度医学化的各种后果；（ii）表明通过创建最佳健康模型无法解决界定医学适当界限的问题；（iii）提出四个指导性问题，以帮助区分医学化和过度医学化。本文应促进对医学化现象的规范性分析，并有助于对医学界限进行生物伦理反思。
