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May 08, 2007
Antibiotic soap?
Is the use of antibiotic soap and its causative link to increasing antibiotic resistance an example of clinical or social iatrogenesis? Illich writes, ”When medical damage to individual health is produced by a sociopolitical mode of transmission, I will speak of ‘social iatrogenesis,’ a term designating all impairments to health that are due precisely to those socio-economic transformations which have been made attractive, possible, or necessary by the institutional shape health care has taken. Social iatrogenesis designates a category of etiology that encompasses many forms. It obtains when medical bureaucracy creates ill-health by increasing stress, by multiplying disabling dependence, by generating new painful needs, by lowering the levels of tolerance for discomfort or pain, by reducing the leeway that people are wont to concede to an individual when he suffers, and by abolishing even the right to self-care.”
Antibiotic soap (can you buy any other kind) is a result of social pressure, perhaps even political pressure, on the industry and on the public. The whole phobia of germs has led to this use of germ-killing (or attenuating) soap, which appears to lead to individual harm, in the form of MRSA and other resistant strains. This is iatrogenesis produced by a sociopolitical mode of transmission.
| By Robert Maddox | 09:54 AM