Beyond the Biomedical Model
...ly. The emotional trauma of suffering and social alienation that the biomedical model creates can leave lasting scars. Both breast cancer within the last decade and syphilis in the mid 1900’s are prime examples of diseases that need much more than medical attention and have been neglected by the practice of the biomedical model. When a woman has to have a mastectomy, she her loss goes beyond the physical absence of her breast. Women are socialized to identify their femininity and sense of maternity with their breasts. The breasts are precious because they link women together, and separate women from men. When a woman loses her breast, it signifies the power of survival and strength, and it leaves a mark to tell the world that there is a problem that needs to be solved. However, the biomedical model ignores the social representation of disease and instead strives to return the body back to a normal appetence. Prosthetics and breast implants are used to obtain this goal. A prosthesis breast is a physical representation of the control that the medicalization of breast cancer gives to doctors. In The Cancer Journals, Audre Lorde points out that society views breast cancer as a cosmetic problem that can be easily solved by prosthesis. (1980:55). The attitude of ‘out of sight, out of mind’ gives the false impression that breast cancer occurs only in isolated incidences, and that it is not prominent enough a disease to be publicly addressed. During her recovery at the hospital, Lorde’s nurse said to her that as soon as she got a prosthesis, “you’ll never know the difference.” Lorde points out that what she was really saying was that no one else would know the difference, further illustrating the medical attempt to mask illness instead of nurture it. (1980:42). Another of Lorde’s nurses scolded her that it “was bad morale for the office because [she] did not wear her prosthesis.” (1980:52). By not displaying the accepted, yet false impression that she was cured and back to normal, Lorde was denying the medical system control over her illness. Even more so, Lorde’s confrontation with this nurse only further illustrates how the biomedical model dictates the idea that illness is abnormal and ugly. Prosthesis emphasizes the cosmetic solution to the scars of a mastectomy, which may draw attention away from much bigger issues such as recurrence and death. This mask gives the false sense of health, and therefore encourages women to negate their responsibilities to maintaining the health of their other breast. The biomedical model’s attempt to restore a sense of normalcy can in turn promote disease. In the middle of the twentieth century, through Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment, the US Public Health Service (PHS) labeled poor black men as the main carriers of syphilis. The experiment was intended to provide treatment to those who could not afford it. By the end of the experiment, forty years later, the men were being used as guinea pigs for the experimentation of our health system as well as being denied penicillin. The doctors played on the naivety of their patients and led them to believe that the false treatment they were getting within the experiment was adequate and penicillin was not needed. (1996:386). There is next to nothing in the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment that does not violate the biomedical model. The men who claimed to practice by and rely on this model denied its every principle and used the presence of social prejudice and the economic status of these men to violate their trust in the doctors and the biomedical model. A cause that’s original purpose was to uphold the biome...