Political Economic Medical Anthropology

Medical Anthropology ANTH 2301 Political Economic Medical Anthropology Critical medical anthropology (CMA), sometimes known as political economic medical anthropology (PEMA), is an additional method of medical anthropology. The disparities in health outcomes brought about by political and economic hierarchy are of particular concern to critical medical anthropology. As ethical duties, critical medical anthropology promotes community engagement and health care advocacy. This viewpoint, which defines biomedicine as capitalist medicine, criticises both the role that biomedicine plays in maintaining systemic disparities in health and illness as well as the socioeconomic circumstances that lead to sickness and health inequalities. The medicalization of social distress is another topic that interests CMA. This tendency has resulted in the treatment of many social issues and life situations as medical issues falling under the scope of biomedicine. Numerous detrimental health effects are caused by structural violence and systemic racism. The term "structural violence" describes how people of certain groups within the greater community are harmed by social structures, whether on purpose or not. Life expectancy, disability, and pregnancy outcomes are just a few of the things that structural violence may impact. It can also breed mistrust in medical institutions. One of the best examples of systemic violence at work in the American medical system is the Tuskegee Syphilis Study, a decades-long "experiment" that examined the long-term consequences of syphilis in Black men under the pretence of medical care. The study's black men were not informed they had syphilis and were not given access to treatment for several years; as a result, the majority of them passed away from the illness. This experiment was not stopped by the government's own protocols for ending unethical research. The trials were only terminated after the general public became aware of what was occurring and protested the study. When using a CMA approach, medical anthropologists are also interested in how medical systems may be innately biassed in favour of or against particular social groups. Anthropologist Leith Mullings's work revealed a lifelong interest in systems of resistance and injustice. Through a postcolonial lens, she investigated traditional medical and religious practices in Ghana, challenging the colonial legacy of structural injustice that she saw. Her work in the US likewise concentrated on health disparities, with an emphasis on Black women's experiences in metropolitan settings and the interaction of race, class, and gender. It is well known that certain American doctors routinely disregard the suffering of women; this is particularly the case when the doctor exhibits racial bigotry. Numerous studies have mentioned this trend, such as one published in The New England Journal of Medicine which discovered that women are more likely than males to have their symptoms and pain levels misinterpreted as coronary heart disease (Nubel 2000). According to a different research published in the Journal of Pain, women experience pain on average 20% more frequently and at a greater intensity than males (Ruau et al. 2012). Khiara Bridges's 2011 book Reproducing Race, which uses an ethnography of a major New York City hospital to examine pregnancy as a site of racialization, is another example of study using a CMA method. The greater rates of child and maternal mortality among African Americans are a result of medical racism. Merrill Singer has researched how societal injustices contribute to drug addiction and violent cycles. His notion of sydnemics—the social confluence of two health disorders that frequently coexist—was developed as a result of this work. For instance, the hibakusha, or survivors of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, in Japan, have shorter life expectancies than the country's generally healthy population and are more prone to acquire various cancers and other illnesses related to their exposure to radioactive radiation. In addition to these health hazards, the general Japanese community severely discriminates against them because of false information about radiation exposure and nuclear radiation. The prejudice also affects the descendants of the hibakusha, who, in spite of having no discernible genetic damage from the atomic explosions, have a higher cancer risk than the general Japanese population. Research on the genetic, cultural, and economic origins of this malignancy is still underway. The almost century-long fight for the Japanese government to acknowledge and treat a number of ailments brought on by the atomic bombs as connected to the bombings serves as a prime example of the syndemics phenomenon. Critical theories of health are an applied approach that applies critical theory to medical system analysis, frequently with the aim of enhancing policy or the system itself. Though they can also serve as the impetus for a research endeavour, recommendations for changes typically stem from data collection efforts aimed at highlighting disparities in health outcomes. Critical theories of health play a crucial role in examining medicine in practice and comprehending the true medical effects of issues such as systematic racism in biomedical therapy and power imbalances in ethnomedical rituals. Social disparities influence health outcomes, life expectancy, and needless human suffering from conception to death. Scholarly work in critical medical anthropology reveals how social factors, such as drug addiction and the effects of climate change, shape health and illness. This effort turns into an obvious call to action. It's the application of medical anthropology.