Considering the health-diesease process: what does the biomedical model answer to?

Abstract

Aiming at expressing criticism to the biomedical model, which is mechanicist and hegemonic in the doctrine and practice that currently provide information to Medicine, the text starts from a historic-evolutive synthesis, presenting ideas and key-characters that were typical of the four paradigms or models that came before the model under study. Later, in a critical analysis, the paper describes the phenomenon of medicalization, a simultaneous consequence of and stimulus to hegemony of the biomedical model. Such hegemony is briefly put in context in consumption society, under the empire of market logic, and taking the issue of medicines as an example of distortions created by increased medicalization and its underlying factors. Finally, he comments on limitations to achieve the desired positive interference of Medicine, once the option for the biomedical model is made.