David A. Hyman, M.D., J.D., is a Professor at Georgetown University Law Center.
J Law Med Ethics. 2018 Sep;46(3):582-587. doi: 10.1177/1073110518804200.
Is the medicalization of poverty a rational and humane response to an intractable problem, or just the latest in a long series of ineffective and costly attempts to address the problem? Considerable ink has been spilled on the dispute, with each side marshalling heart-rending anecdotes to help make their case - along with the obligatory statistics and regression analyses. Rather than add more verbiage to that dispute, this article sketches out a framework for understanding the phenomenon of medicalization, along with a description of the demand-side and supply-side factors that have brought us to this pass.
贫困的医学化是对一个棘手问题的合理和人道的回应，还是只是解决这个问题的一系列无效和昂贵尝试中的最新尝试？关于这个争议已经有很多笔墨，每一方都援引了令人痛心的轶事来帮助他们说明问题——还有必不可少的统计数据和回归分析。本文不是要在这个争议上再添更多笔墨，而是勾勒出一个理解医学化现象的框架，以及描述导致我们走到这一步的需求方和供应方因素。
