In this paper, I would like to argue that people with medical condition the is still misunderstood and largely undiagnosed does experience hermeneutical injustice, rather than a mere circumstantial epistemic bad luck as categorized by Miranda Fricker (2007). The argument provided by Fricker for differentiating hermeneutical injustice and circumstantial epistemic bad luck is invalid most of the time. This is because those patients continually experience unequal hermeneutical participation and background social conditions that maintained the relevant hermeneutical gap. Before presenting my arguments, I would first examine Fricker’s view on hermeneutical injustice and the poignant case of circumstantial epistemic bad luck. Next, the unequal social …show more content…
Even if questions about his feelings were being asked, questions that are opposing to the doctor’s judgements are barely asked. Patients are usually hermeneutically marginalized in a way that their views are often being excluded from epistemic consideration. This may be attributed by the difference in social position of doctors and patients. Doctors usually hold greater social power than patients due to their profession. The power can be exercised unconsciously to marginalize the hermeneutical participation of the relatively powerless patient groups. In the case of diseases that are highly infectious and fatal, the usual response is avoiding contact with those patients instead of searching and learning more information about that disease. Hence, the medical condition remains misunderstood. Salient negative resources are more likely to be left in the hermeneutical pool because those are the ones which are noticeable to the dominant group. True resources that captures the patients’ medical situation and experience can be ignored. Hence, there is a prejudicial exclusion from the pooling of knowledge, which is the primary harm of hermeneutical injustice identified by Fricker. Consider the following case: there is a disease that has similar symptoms as being physically abused, in which bruises and bone fracture are the common and frequent symptom. Patients with such disease visited several large hospitals, but all medical staffs conclude that the patient has been physically abused and refuse to agree that they are symptoms of a disease or investigate further. The medical staffs have used the usual interpretation of treating the presence of bruises and bone fracture as a physical abuse in preference of accepting the very unlikely but true interpretation held by the patients. Those who are living or had close contact with the patients with such disease may be accused of physically
Another example of this construct not met in the case of Henrietta Lacks was the lack of compassionate care. Patient experiences can be improved if healthcare professionals act with compassion and dedication to serve patients and promote their well-being. Henrietta suffered so much pain and complained about the discomfort as complicated by the disease process, but her complaints were ignored; instead, her doctors wrote just the opposite of what she complained about stating, “the patient states that she feels fairly well” and continued, “no evidence of recurrence” (Skloot, 2010, p.63). This is an example of deception, lack of compassion and outright contradiction to professionalism and commitment to the primacy of the patient.
Throughout Farewell to Manzanar by Jeanne Wakatsuki and Into the Desert by Nancy Karakane, the characters undergo physical and emotional injustice which shape who they later become. In Farewell to Manzanar we learn about a seven-year old‘s first hand view before during and after camp Manzanar. The Wakatsuki family and Japanese-americans along the west coast were taken from their home and put into relocation camps. In this book we endure her issues in and out of camp and also the injustice that not only does she face, but also many other Japanese-americans.
However, as time went on, several problems arose which had to do with the principle of justice in healthcare. In America, it is the accepted norm that it is unjust to treat one person better or worse than another person, in similar circumstances (Tong, 2007, p.29). In an attempt
So Far From God is a Chicana feminist novel written by Ana Castillo. Castillo’s novel consists of four main characters: La Loca (The crazy one), Fe (Faith), Caridad (Charity), and Esperanza (Hope). La Loca is given her nickname after being resurrected from the dead. In reality, she had a seizure and did not die. The town and family consider her to be crazy because of her aversion to human contact. Fe too is considered insane. She spends a year screaming after her fiance calls of their wedding. Fe eventually marries her cousin because it is the only way she will have the house and dishwasher she’s always dreamed of. Caridad is attacked because of her sexual liberation. Esperanza decides to take her destiny into her own hands and becomes a journalist, but is sent to the middle east where she is killed. After all of the daughters are dead the mother founds the Group M.O.M.As (Mothers of Martyrs and Saints) and becomes empowered through her involvement in the organization. Castillo demonstrates injustice in patriarchy in symbolism and magical realism.
All too often in regards to medical treatment, physicians are taught everything known about the scientific approaches to disease but still fail to realize the important details of how the disease impacts the individual. Many physicians do not show empathy to their patients and instead just focus on the current diagnosis and the probable outcome. This creates a divide between patient and provider and can even lead to negative feelings of the patient that far outweigh the diagnosis itself. A feeling of hopelessness and despair may accompany the empty feeling that comes with failing to explore the patient’s perspective on care. In this essay, Parrish states,
People have experienced injustice in different fields through history all around the world. At school time, is a period that children are getting older, and starting to shape social ethics and values, and try to get recognition among their classmates and friends. I think when some situations happened unfairly during childhood, people would learn useful lessons. During the school time, it also taught me one lesson as well. I am not hundred percent sure that I understood what injustice is, but I think I know how deal with it now.
This excerpt from “The Treatment of Bibi Haldar” by Jhumpa Lahiri has multiple themes, but one that really stands out above others is the effects of ignorance. One would disagree with my choice of theme, but one must not be so rash with their disagreement, first you must look at the writing techniques and the choice of words that Lahiri uses in the excerpt. The ignorance in which I talk about circulates around Bibi’s family. If Lahiri describes her events in chronological order, which I believe she does, then we can see that in the first paragraph, the family first expresses their ignorance of this poor girl’s illness when they contact priests, religion, etc. in order to heal their daughter instead of official medical specialists. In the following paragraph, the author informs us of the many ‘specialists’ in the medical field that the family had contacted in regards to Bibi’s ailment. None of
In conclusion, Person introduces two conflicting opinions of the main message, medical ethics. However, there is a bias towards Jenna’s initial view, and the opinions of Lily and Alleys. Overall, the author uses this book as a way of showing us the ever-more relevant debate of medical ethics, but wants us to make our own decision of what view to
The conceptualisation of medicine as an institution of societal control was first theorised by Parsons (1951), and from this stemmed the notion of the deviant termed illness in which the “sick role” was a legitimised condition. The societal reaction and perspective was deemed a pillar of the emerging social construction of disease and conception of the formalised medical model of disease. Concerns surrounding medicalisation fundamentally stem from the fusion of social and medical concerns wherein the lines between the two are gradually blurred and the the social consequences of the proliferation of disease diagnosis that results from such ambiguities of the social medical model.
Once Martin Luther King Jr. the American Minister announced, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” What Martin Luther King Jr. is saying here is that injustice can spread out everywhere unnoticeably quick and it can shape everyone’s identity. Just a bit of injustice can modify a person from their thinking to their physical forms. To go through injustice is a big deal, and to act on it is rare. In Arnold Junior’s diary, A Diary Of Part-Time Indian, By Sherman Alexie, Junior is faced with multiple injustices, and to act on them, he leaves the reservation and goes to a “White people only” school, Reardan. The ones that he left behind have a much hatred on Junior, but he knows better than that. He can’t look back. The only choice left for him is to keep going forward. Similarly,in the book A Long Way Gone, by Ishmael finds himself at a loss because he had lost all his family and lots of his friends during the civil war in Sierra Leone, and he doesn’t know where they are or if they are alive or dead,he is suddenly joined the government and is known as the boy soldier. He is hurt everywhere. He doesn’t know anything at all, but he has to keep going. Many individuals like Junior and Ishmael faced with injustice suffer great loss, but in order to prevent more loss from happening, they have to take big risks. This might lead to much hatred from those left behind. However, when they draw on an inner resilience they are able to succeed in their quest for justice.
In the sociology of medicine Parson (1951) regarded medicine as functional in social terms. By tackling the person’s problems in medical terms the tendency towards deviance that was represented by ill health could be safely directed, until they could return to their normal self. (Lawrence 1994: p 64-65: BMJ 2004: Parson cited in Gabe, Bury & Elston 2006, p 127).
Though the concept of social injustice is universal in nature, the experience varies with each person. Factors like a person’ race, or gender can further influence the severity of the injustice; victims caught in the overlap between discriminations often go unrecognized by the law and society. Many people recognize the names Michael Brown, Eric Garner, and Tamir Rice as African Americans who were murdered by local police. But names like Michelle Cusseaux, Tanish Anderson, and Meagan Hockaday often receive less feedback even though they are also murdered African Americans. The only distinction between the sets of names is gender. Even within racial injustice, discrimination is present between genders as some cases get national
The doctor and his patient portray a troubled encounter that is subject to discussion. This short story reflects real or plausible issues comparable in real life. One example of such an event in Brooklyn when a construction worker filed a lawsuit against a hospital for subjecting him to a rectal exam against his wishes. According to his lawyer, the man begged,”please don’t do that’’ as he was held down, and he punched one of the doctors before being sedated and examined without consent. As a result the man allegedly developed post-traumatic stress disorder as a result of the experience.(Tsai,1) Given to the poor man’s circumstance and how the medical professionals treated him, you can now see how unfit doctors can be to their own patients.
Townsend and Davidson (1988) also suggested that the term health is derived from the word “whole”, which is a recipient of the healing process. Therefore, an attempt to heal or cure in medical field literally means, to make whole or restore health. It is this idea that influences medicine to adopt a mechanistic approach towards disease management thereby obscuring the understanding of health in human context of well-being, which advocates for alternative or complementary approaches. This viewpoint also reflects in some definitions and the medical model discussed above. The criticisms of the medical by Illich (1974) is that the medical view only deals with the cause of disease or illness rather than the external factors affecting the person’s health. Within different sections of medicine, for example the mental health department, there are marked differences when explaining the origin of illness, disease and treatments.
In the world that we live in today, many people would find it difficult to imagine living in a world where medicine and treatment are not readily available. The replacement of religious explanations to medical and scientific explanations has become a means of social control. If a person is in pain, they can easily set up an appointment with a doctor and receive some sort of medical diagnosis. However, there are certain instances where a problem has not been medicalized, or recognized as a medical problem, and their issue will be dismissed completely. The movie One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest delves into the idea of medicalization and how it can be used for the good, or for the bad, in terms of the “sick role.” Medicalization in the