LIMITS TO MEDICINE- Medical Nemesis: The Expropriation of Health

Description

‘The medical establishment has become a major threat to health’. This is the opening statement and basic contention of Ivan Illich’s searing social critique. Decimating the myth of the magic of contemporary medicine and ruthlessly examining the rituals conducted by the medical profession and its adjuncts, he demonstrates how the fulfilment of genuine human needs, such as the maintenance of good health, has been turned by over professionalization into a nightmarish spiritual and physical agent of destruction: treatment creates illness. In response Illich calls for a halt to the expropriation of man’s coping ability and presents an alternative to the inevitable Medical nemesis that will set in unless the autonomy of the individual is re-established.

Ivan Illichwasborn in Vienna and grew up in Europe, the United States, and Puerto Rico. In 1964 he helped setup the Centerfor Intercultural Documentation (CIDOC) in Cuernavaca, Mexico. At CIDOC he directedresearch seminars on “Institutional Alternatives in a Technological Society,” with special focus on Latin America. He was the author of Deschooling Society and Tools for Conviviality.