Through the Expansion of What in Medicine Is Deemed Relevant to the Good Practice of Life
This expansion is illustrated by the use of medical jargon to describe a state of being—such as the health of the nation or the health of the economy. Any political or economic proposal or objective that enhances the “health” of those concerned wins approval.
There are numerous areas in which medicine, religion, and law overlap. For example, public health practice, law, and medicine overlap in the creation of laws that establish quarantine and the need for immunization. As another ex- ample, a child is unable to enter school without proof of having received certain inoculations. Medicine and law also merge in areas of sanitation and rodent and insect control. A legal-medical dispute can arise over the guilt or innocence of a criminal as determined by his or her “mental state” at the time of a crime.
Some diseases carry a social stigma: One must be screened for tuberculo- sis before employment, a history of typhoid fever permanently prevents a per- son from commercially handling food, venereal disease must be reported and treated, and even the ancient disease of leprosy continues to carry a stigma.
Abortion represents an area replete with conflict that involves politics, law, religion, and medicine. Those in favor of abortion rights believe that it is a woman’s right to have an abortion and that the matter is confidential between the patient and her physician. Opponents argue on religious and moral grounds that abortion is murder. At present, the law sanctions abortion. In many states, however, Medic- aid will no longer pay for an abortion unless the mother’s life is in danger, a policy that makes it increasingly difficult for the poor to obtain these services.
Another highly charged area of conflict involves the practice of eutha- nasia. With the burgeoning of technological improvements, the definition of death has changed in recent years. It sometimes takes a major court battle to