Turismo en salud: ¿una forma de medicalización de la sociedad?
Loading...
Date
2017
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Corporación Universitaria Lasallista
Abstract
Introduction. Postmodernity is characterized among
many of its typologies by extreme consumerism. In
different countries, market logic extends from product
circulation on the market to the configuration of
the right to health services, to such an extent that
pharmaceutical, clinical, cosmetics science and
tourism multinationals would seem to have gained
total control of biomedical sciences. A control of
people’s right to health services by the market can
thus be observed. In fact, an indicative sign of this
reality is a significant increase in the medicalization of
society, since habitual problems of human existence
are treated as medical problems. In our environment,
it is common to see a great amount of treatments,
medication, and cosmetic and nutritional products
being used to give sanitary response to problems which are not medical a priori, such as aging, unhappiness,
social isolation, shyness, among others. Objective.
Show the relationship between health tourism and the
medicalization of society, from bioethics and biolaw
perspectives. Materials and methods. This article
reports on a qualitative documentary investigation
that seeks to bring together methodologies typical
of bioethics and legal hermeneutics. Results. This
work shows how health tourism is related to the
medicalization of society, since the former is shown
in many cases as a life experience into which medical
treatment can be “packaged”, commercially speaking;
tourist experiences offer, along with cosmetic
treatments, surgery and hospitalization, spa services
and private medical home care. Conclusion. Health
tourism, seen from a bioethics perspective, would
seem to be redefining the doctor-patient relationship,
turning it from service assistance to a commercial
relationship between a service operator and a client
in which profit, not medical assistance, prevails; thus
the patients are reduced to the capacity they have to
pay for the different medical services offered.
Description
Keywords
Corporación Universitaria Lasallista, Bioética, Bioderecho, Hermenéutica, Derechos médicos, Servicios médicos
Citation
Revista Lasallista de Investigación Vol. 14 N. 2