Social science & medicine
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Social science & medicine · Jan 1987
Surgical birth: interpretations of cesarean delivery among private hospital patients and nursing staff.
Cesarean delivery, although classified by medical practitioners as major surgery, is simultaneously defined as childbirth by both specialists and laypeople. Women experiencing cesarean delivery, therefore, confront a contradiction which affects postpartum treatment by nursing staff and expectations by family and the postcesarean patient regarding appropriate responses to delivery. Elicitation of the explanatory models of cesarean patients in a private Dallas hospital indicates the ambiguity in the definition of the cesarean reflecting more general trends in American obstetrics. Further, the data demonstrate the limited influence of the natural childbirth movement and the acceptance of technological intervention at birth in this population.
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Social science & medicine · Jan 1986
Historical ArticleCodes of medical ethics: traditional foundations and contemporary practice.
The Hippocratic Coprus recognized the interaction of 'business' and patient-health moral considerations, and urged that the former be subordinated to the latter. During the 1800s with the growth of complexity in both scientific knowledge and the organization of health services, the medical ethical codes addressed themselves to elaborate rules of conduct to be followed by the members of the newly emerging national medical associations. After World War II the World Medical Association was established as an international forum where national medical associations could debate the ethical problems presented by modern medicine. ⋯ Their content is examined and concern is voiced about the danger of falling into cultural relativism when questions about the methods of financing medical services are the subject of an ethical declaration which is arrived at by consensus in the W. M. A.
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Social science & medicine · Jan 1986
The political economy of doctors' strikes in Nigeria: a Marxist interpretation.
Professions have been traditionally conceptualized as special occupational categories with distinguishing traits called to provide needed service. The social and economic context of these attributes is assumed unproblematic or taken for granted. ⋯ It analyses professions and their traits within a given context, and in relation to other groups. It is suggested that doctors in Nigeria are a powerful and privileged group, a view they seem to successfully use to pursue their interests.
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Social science & medicine · Jan 1986
Historical ArticleAedes aegypti mosquitoes in the Americas: a review of their interactions with the human population.
This paper describes the significant changes in the relationship between Aedes aegypti mosquitoes and the human population in the Americas from the 1800s to present. First, the history of the arrival of the mosquito, the consequent epidemics of yellow fever and dengue, and the eventual implication of the mosquito as vector is described. ⋯ Third, the limited efforts of the United States to control its A. aegypti population, which has serious implications for the success of the control of the species in the rest of the Americas, are commented upon. It is shown, in conclusion, that politics and economics, in addition to the state of biomedical knowledge, have a significant impact on the relationship between the mosquito and human populations in the Western hemisphere.
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This paper debates some of the issues involved in attempting to apply economic analysis to the health care sector when medical ethics plays such an important part in determining the allocation of resources in that sector. Two distinct ethical positions are highlighted as being fundamental to the understanding of resource allocation in this sector -- deontological and utilitarian theories of ethics. ⋯ It is further argued that the structure of the health care sector augments these "individualistic' ethics. It is also suggested that different actors in the health care sector address questions of resource allocation with respect to different time periods, and that this serves to further enhance the influence of "individualistic' ethical codes in this sector.