By Paul Weiser
Let's examine inaccurate taxonomies - classing things improperly, likes with unlikes and apart from likes. One excellent example is bringing non-, even anti- medical concepts into the class "medical."
Take, for example, insanity. It consists of classifiable human behaviors, a few having physical causes (such as AIDS/syphilitic dementia or ergot- induced paranoia). But we are urged to call all abnormal, irrational behavior"mental illness," even when its obvious (and rational) purpose is to control others or mask valid inadequacy-feelings. Insanity is a social construct, not a disease.
Or consider abortion. It consists of using physical means to terminate (abort) the normal course of human reproduction and at least one established, potential life. The means have the appearance of medical tools (drugs and instruments) but demanding that abortion be classed as a "medical procedure" is no more valid than calling lethal injection for capital punishment "medical" because it uses a hollow needle, or trunk- murder "medical" when it utilizes a surgical bone saw.
The point is, medicine is a very ancient and strictly limited classification. It is not a set of tools or practices, but a philosophy with a simple but absolute set of ethics: physical human life is sacred and doctors are its conservators. Behavior, unless physically caused, is no subject for medicine; neither is the destruction of life, which must be anathema. Bad behavior and inconvenient pregnancy are matter for counselors, not doctors.
This medicalization of other areas because the tools of true medicine ("anti-psychotic" drugs and life- destroying abortion) can produce one easy type of "solution" is analogous to the scientification of ethics that constituted Marxism: the tools of economic science were misapplied to morals. This perversion of method outside its proper realm produced Communist hells, and today produces villainous behavior because "medicine" - abortifacient or psychoactive - cannot mend a misbehaving person.
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