SOC 101 Lecture Notes - Lecture 13: Talcott Parsons, Assisted Reproductive Technology, Whitehall Study
Document Summary
The rise (and fall?) of the medical profession: physicians have a great amount of social power, political power, and prestige for a variety of reasons: They offer a universally valued product - health and longevity. There is a limited number of physicians due to the extensive education and training and the strict regulation of the profession. Illness is a social construct: what it means to be sick (or healthy) has changed throughout history and differs from one place to another: medicalization. The process by which problems or issues not traditionally seen as medical come to be framed as such: alcoholism. The whitehall study: who: government supplemented health care provided to people who are older provides supplementary health care for people who are impoverished. There are numerous health discrepancies between races in the united states, with whites having the best outcomes overall.
