Q J Med 2003; 96: 695-697
© 2003 Association of Physicians
Editorial |
The politics of medicine
| The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below. |
Medicine and politics are inextricably intertwined, and yet they are very different enterprises. Political conditions can have a dramatic effect upon life expectancy: famine, for example, is now believed to occur only in conditions where there are few freedoms, including that of information.1 In the modern state, the institutional arrangements under which medicine is practised are determined by the central government, according to its political philosophy. Medical achievements, real or imagined, have often been used to make political points: the Dean of St Paul’s, the Rev. Hewlett Johnson, once extolled blood transfusion as if it were unique to the Soviet Union,2 the thought of Mao Tse-Tung was once credited with astonishing medical powers,3 and not only by the Chinese,4,5 one visitor saw a political lesson in the absence of acne in Hanoi,6 and Cuba’s health-care system has frequently been used to justify the revolution there (e.g. reference 7). By contrast,
West Midlands Poisons Unit City Hospital Birmingham UK e-mail: ADan211530@aol.com