PHSC 401 Study Guide - Quiz Guide: Public Finance, Blood Test, Safe Sex
31 Jan 2017
School
Department
Course
Professor
Document Summary
The biomedical model internally denied that disease could have any cultural meaning, but it was employed in concert with cultural constructions of disease. It served to break down traditional cultural constructions. Germs and viruses respected no class or racial lines. The success of biomedical model has generated a new target for stigmatization: the disease itself, seen as an exogenous force, operating independently of the body, the product of germs, viruses, or malign occurrences. Victims of disease have been shunned without belonging to a marginalized special group; being a cancer suffer by itself was shameful and people tried to avoid the word cancer. Campaigns against cancer and other diseases were called wars as though declared on some soveriegn foriegn power. Biomedical understanding of diseases has weakened much of the rationale behind moral judgements that allowed some groups to bear the blame for epidemics.
