Question

How do pharmaceutical advertisements fit into the western ethnomedical system known as biomedicine?

Answer 1

Ans) Biomedicine is the name given to a form of western professional medicine that asserts that illness is largely caused by deviations from universal biological norms.

- For most of the past century, this approach to medicine has been the standard for evaluation of all other approaches, whether popular or professional.

- Biomedicine assumes that illness and medical theory, science and practice, are a cultural and have universal validity.

- Changes in the character of biomedicine have led to novel avenues of research, including conflicts of interest in biomedical practice and research and the related issue of pharmaceutical companies’ activities that affect medical practice.

- The nature and impact of medical technologies—building on earlier studies of reproductive technologies—and how technology affects training are further areas of research.

- Others include the disease category of dementia, biomedical ethics cross-culturally, and the sciences that biomedicine applies.

• Global Pharma:

- Health increasingly tied to pharmaceuticals drugs displacing other concepts of treatments
- History of pharmaceuticals: 19th century - alkaloids mass production insulin, WWII antibiotics, etc.
- From compounds to finish product recent rise of anti depressants, AIDS etc.
Problem 1: Drugs are testing in poor but literate areas because less saturated ethical issues
Problem 2: Drugs changing health care
- Biomedicine wants to save life at all cost (premature babies and at home end of life care) diagnose affects how present/experience ourselves.