He gives arresting examples of the
medicalization of deviance--stories of 'drapetomania' from 19th-century America, of pathological gambling and alcoholism in the 20th century, through to the
medicalization of everything, even old age.
One wonders, for instance, how chapters on medical missionaries, colonial midwives, or the gender ideologies of Congolese evolues can ignore Nancy Rose Hunt's extremely relevant book, A Colonial Lexicon of Birth Ritual,
Medicalization and Mobility in the Congo (1999).
Archbishop Mario Conti described the proposals as "a real and grave threat to the rights of parents, the work of Catholic schools, and to society's morality." He castigated the panel for its "almost total
medicalization of the problem," noting that ignoring the moral aspects, at the expense of the medical, has up till now not improved but worsened the situation.
Finally, the paper explores the relation between PMDD and sexuality offering an additional voice in the developing discourse on the
medicalization of women's experiences of sexuality.
A number of sociologists have commented on the increasing
medicalization of areas of human experience, notably reproduction, and a tendency to describe and explain such experience with reference to mental illness and disease.
Back in 1961, psychiatrist Thomas Szasz noted the "
medicalization" of behavior formerly classified as crime or sin, such as drug addiction or what was defined as sexual deviance.
Medicalization refers to the process by which non-medical conditions become defined and treated as medical problems, usually in terms of illnesses and disorders (Conrad 1992).
Providing them with modern midwifery instruments has led to
medicalization of the practice, resulting in a greater number of unrecorded forms of FGM now being practiced in Sudan.
This material was disseminated at the Seminar, "Biotechnology: Ethical and Theological Implications," organized by Brazil's Conselho Nacional das Igrejas Cristas (National Council of Christian Churches) and held in August 2002.The first essay provides an overview of the field of genetics with a special emphasis on cloning, and the second addresses in vitro fertilization and embryo transfer: the growing trend of the
medicalization of procreation.
A Colonial Lexicon of Birth Ritual,
Medicalization, and Mobility in the Congo.
However, this
medicalization of deviancy did have limits, which Goldberg suggests emerged most clearly in the case of Jewish patients.