Medical Nemesis
The Expropriation of Health
by Ivan Illich · first published 1974
43% recommend57% neutral
"The medical establishment has become a major threat to health. The disabling impact of professional control over medicine has reached the proportions of an epidemic. Iatrogenesis, the name for this new epidemic, comes from iatros, the Greek word for physician, and genesis, meaning origin. Discussion of the disease of medical progress has moved up on the agendas of medical conferences, researchers concentrate on the sick-making powers of diagnosis and therapy, and reports on paradoxical damage caused by cures for sickness take up increasing space in medical dope-sheets ... The public has been
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…him. edit, personal note: I was a big fan as a teenager. My dad has all the Whole Earth issues and had a few Illich books in the basement and I really enjoyed Tools for Conviviality a lot. As well as Medical Nemesis, To Hell With Good Intentions, and Deschooling Society. That one almost made me drop out of high school.
on “The meta-positioning habit of mind” ↗Someone needs to write an update to the classic book Medical Nemesis by Ivan Illich. A short review gives the flavor: https://jech.bmj.com/content/57/12/928 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivan_Illich#Medical_Nemesis
on “Iatrogenics: Why Intervention Often Leads to Worse Outcomes” ↗Medical Nemesis by Ivan Illich
on “What's the most radical book you've read?” ↗…alternative for like 60% of students. If we deschooled, we would absolutely end up with a double-digit percentage of the population either illiterate, innumerate, or both. If you're honest with yourself, Medical Nemesis is has some great passages but in it is also the germs of the anti-vaccination and natural healing movements. His critiques are powerful but the answer is not deinstitutionalism. The answer is taking…
on “Deschooling Society (1970)” ↗From Illitch's Wikipedia entry: "In his Medical Nemesis, first published in 1975, also known as Limits to Medicine, Illich subjected contemporary Western medicine to detailed attack. He argued that the medicalization in recent decades of so many of life's…
on “Medical Nemesis by Ivan Illitch [pdf]” ↗A few passages from Limits to Medicine, Medical Nemesis: The Expropriation of Health by Ivan Illich, 1974: "A world of optimal and widespread health is obviously a world of minimal and only occasional medical intervention. Healthy people are those who live…
on “The lost art of recovery for healing” ↗This seems like a good spot to repost a few passages from Limits to Medicine, Medical Nemesis: The Expropriation of Health by Ivan Illich, 1974: "A world of optimal and widespread health is obviously a world of minimal and only occasional medical intervention. Healthy people are those who live…
on “The Collapse of U.S. Healthcare – The Perspective of a Primary Care Physician” ↗Illich talked about this. That’s what Medical Nemesis was all about, and Deschooling Society.
on “Institutions try to preserve the problem to which they are the solution” ↗…to prevent disease. We need to think about prevention in new and better ways." An earlier book from 1982 on this sort of issue, including the disempowering psychology of our current medical system: "Medical Nemesis: The Expropriation of Health Paperback" by Ivan Illich https://www.amazon.com/Medical-Nemesis-Expropriation-Ivan-Il... ""The medical establishment has become a major threat to health." with this opening…
on “The hyped and distorted claims of psychedelic marketing” ↗