School of Applied Social Studies, University College Cork, Cork, Ireland.
Int J Health Policy Manag. 2021 Aug 1;10(8):500-502. doi: 10.34172/ijhpm.2020.114.
The profound inadequacies of Western modernist ways of thinking have been revealed by the intimately connected catastrophes of climate destruction, and more recently, the coronavirus crisis. The pandemic has forced us to notice deepening inequalities and has generated troubling questions about its causes, and who and what can be sacrificed in a pandemic. The analysis offered in Evelyn de Leeuw's essay "The rise of the consucrat" suggests that the particular type of patient advocates she calls consucrats are unlikely to engage in thinking together about these urgent questions. If anything, due to their narrow biomedical focus and alliances with the pharmaceutical industry, they are likely to facilitate catastrophe capitalism. However, within the field of patient advocacy, there is a diversity of ways of thinking, occasionally leading to bitter contention. A number of terms is needed to reflect this diversity. One group of patient advocates who have come to the fore in recent times might be called medical cosmopolitans, or cosmedics, those who are challenging opportunistic catastrophe capitalism during the pandemic and advocating for global access to essential medicines. Forcing us to notice our deep interdependencies and entanglements, the pandemic has revealed how ludicrous it is to think about patients as consumers, and the need to think about and imagine more-than-human patient advocacy.
由气候破坏和最近的冠状病毒危机这两个紧密相连的灾难揭示了西方现代主义思维方式的严重不足。这场大流行迫使我们注意到不平等的加剧，并对其原因以及在大流行中可以牺牲谁和什么产生了令人不安的问题。伊夫林·德·卢（Evelyn de Leeuw）的文章“ consucrat 的兴起”中的分析表明，她所谓的 consucrat 这种特殊类型的患者倡导者不太可能共同思考这些紧迫的问题。如果有的话，由于他们狭隘的生物医学重点和与制药业的结盟，他们很可能会促成灾难资本主义。但是，在患者倡导领域，存在着各种思维方式，偶尔会引起激烈的争论。需要使用一些术语来反映这种多样性。在最近一段时间中崭露头角的一组患者倡导者可以被称为医学世界主义者，或者说是 cosmedics，他们在大流行期间对机会主义的灾难资本主义提出了挑战，并倡导全球获得基本药物。大流行迫使我们注意到我们之间的深刻相互依存和纠缠，这表明将患者视为消费者的想法是多么荒谬，并且需要思考和想象超越人类的患者倡导。
