Week 3- formative blog
Breast cancer is the most commonly diagnosed form of cancer in the world, and is now treated as a global health concern (Wilkinson, Gathani, 2022). It can be drawn upon to explain what is meant by biomedicalization.
Medical intervention is the only form of treatment that will control the spreading of breast tumours and reduce the mortality risk (WHO, 2023). Breast cancer would have to have been medicalised at some point to be considered a disease which requires medical treatment, rather than being considered merely a ‘bodily process’. To me, there is no question that breast cancer is a medical issue but at some point, it would not have been considered so. However perhaps this is a Eurocentric opinion, for no doubt in other communities it is believed that there are other ways of healing cancer, like cleansing the spirit, or soul, for example.
Biomedicalization is an extension of medicalisation; categorising bodily conditions as medical issues (Conrad, 2007). It refers to the increasing influence and dominance of biomedical approaches, technologies, and interventions that are emphasised and enforced by society upon perceiving and addressing various issues. Specifically, breast cancer exemplifies how biomedicalization has brought a new expectation of self-surveillance, as a means of health governance. Women are urged by medical professionals and the media to ‘check their breasts’; as a way of early intervention. Otherwise put, in contrast with medicalisation, biomedicalization emphasises (technologically based) transformation, such as mammograms, to detect risk sooner rather than later. What’s more, there is a growing acknowledgement of different body (and breast) types in media campaigns, highlighting how with biomedicalization, we have seen more customisation via individualised bodies (Clarke, Shim, 2010). The main theme I have noticed in regard to breast cancer is the imposed individualised risk and responsibility, seen by the responsibilisation paradigm and as Sweeney puts, the promotion of ‘precautionary consumption practices’ (2014).
REFERENCES
Clarke, A.E. and Shim, J., 2010. Medicalization and biomedicalization revisited: technoscience and transformations of health, illness and American medicine. In Handbook of the sociology of health, illness, and healing: A blueprint for the 21st century (pp. 173-199). New York, NY: Springer New York.
Conrad, P. (2007)The medicalization of society on the transformation of human conditions into treatable disorders. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Sweeney, E., 2014. The individualization of risk and responsibility in breast cancer prevention education campaigns. Policy Futures in Education, 12(7), pp.945-960.
Wilkinson, L. and Gathani, T. (2022) ‘Understanding breast cancer as a global health concern’, The British Journal of Radiology, 95(1130). doi:10.1259/bjr.20211033.
World Health Organization (WHO) (2023)Breast cancer,World Health Organization. Available at: https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/breast-cancer#:~:text=Overview,producing%20lobules%20of%20the%20breast. (Accessed: 04 February 2024).
