Limits to Medicine: Medical Nemesis: The Expropriation of Health

Abstract

First published in 1976,, the arguments made by Ivan Illich then are equally true today. ‘The medical establishment has become a major threat to health.’ This is the opening statement and basic contention of Ivan Illich’s searing social critique. In Limits to Medicine, Ivan Illich has enlarged on his theme of disabling social services, schools, and transport, which have become, through over-industrialization, harmful to man. In this radical contribution to social thinking, Illich decimates the myth of the magic of the medical profession. Illich argues that through iatrogenic diseases (ones that result from medical treatment), doctors can find themselves doing as much harm as good, and that there is a limit to the amount of medicine that a civilization should believe it is good to give.

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