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Medicine as Grooming Behavior: Potlatch of Care and Distributive Justice

Y. Michael Barilan

Meir Hospital, Kfar Saba/Tel Aviv University, Israelbentovia{at}shani.net

This article offers a conceptualization of medicine as based on the ethological term ‘grooming behavior’. This is a paradigm that frees medicine from strict dependence on definitions of health and disease. The paradigm is descriptive and it aims at a better understanding of our health – related habits and institutions. The article particularly tries to illuminate the beneficial aspects of ‘over-medicalization’ and wastefulness that allegedly characterize contemporary biomedicine, mainly the mitigation of social tensions and the provision of luring ethoses of human action as alternatives to individualism, militarism, and the like. ‘Medicine as grooming behavior’ balances the hegemonic vectors rampant in biomedicine. Moreover, contrary to the equilibrium concept of health, the article claims that each choice of grooming entails its own accord and discord with the human body. Therefore, desert for healthcare is not a unique right, nor can it be delineated naturally. The one desert people do have is the right to equal consideration of one’s subjective worldview. Medicine as grooming behavior enhances such consideration while it cultivates diversity and creativity, which are pivotal to human happiness and well being.

Key Words: distributive justice in health • enhancement medicine • grooming behavior • medicalization • medicine • regimens of health

Health:, Vol. 6, No. 2, 237-260 (2002)
DOI: 10.1177/136345930200600206
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