Defining Disease: The Gold Standard of Disease versus the Fiat Standard of Diagnosis

What should and what should not count as a disease? This question is a troublesome one for all of medicine, especially for psychiatry. Everyone - doctors and patients, drug companies and heath insurance systems, politicians and people - has a stake in how we demarcate disease from nondisease. None o...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:The independent review (Oakland, Calif.) Calif.), 2005-12, Vol.10 (3), p.325
Main Author: Szasz, Thomas
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Bile
Definitions
Democracy
Disease
Health care industry
Health care policy
Law
Physicians
Physiology
Political power
Politicians
Politics
Science
Studies
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Summary:What should and what should not count as a disease? This question is a troublesome one for all of medicine, especially for psychiatry. Everyone - doctors and patients, drug companies and heath insurance systems, politicians and people - has a stake in how we demarcate disease from nondisease. None of us can escape the obligation to grapple with this issue and to decide how and where we ought to draw the line. For physicians and the medical profession, the question requires two different answers-one to satisfy the needs of medical science, another to satisfy the needs of medical practice and the persons it serves. The maintenance of scientific standards depends on agreement and authority, whereas the maintenance of moral and legal standards depends on tradition and power. Defining disease (and treatment) has long been the privilege of physicians. Today, it is in large part the privilege of the therapeutic state.
ISSN:1086-1653
2169-3420