Should you trust imedicine? Part 2/n

Here I'll explain what I mean by medicine as an institution, or imedicine, as I call it. I actually assume that you kind of already know what I mean by that, but I'll give you more details about that. By the way, when I say "imedicine" I'm always talking about western imedicine.

We all talk about institutions: the government, the justice system, the police, and so on. They all have a few thing in common: they're socially accepted, they're an integral, pervasive, part of society, they're legally sanctioned (remember that nowadays most people in the world live under the rule of law), AND they have power. Power over the people in a given society. Medicine share with these institutions all these features and others, and I would like you to particularly keep in your mind the last one (power), always remembering that it derives in an obvious manner from the other ones. Since an instution is everywhere in a society and has legal and social backup, it's easy to forget to question it.

Now, focusing on the institution imedicine, what specific features it has? Like the police, it includes a profession. That is, a group of special practitioners that: have a established body of practices, beliefs and knowledge; must fulfill special criteria (regulated by law) to practice; must undergo a set of established educational requirents (coursework, supervised practice, examinations, and so on). Beyond that, imedicine is ancient, going back all the way to pre-history. That is, broadly seen, it has a very long tradition as a community of healing practitioners. Third specific feature as an institution: imedicine's existence is alleged or felt (the allegation and the feeling, though, being widely accepted) to be necessary. Meaning: many people believe that they need imedicine to carry on with their lives. Furthermore, its profession, cited above, accrues huge social status (very huge, indeed!). It seems to be one of the most pretigious options of work in any country, and the go-to career when it comes to choosing post-secondary education. Also, it involves huge incomes, even for the most mediocre of its special practitioners (called doctors, remember)! So much so, that these special practitioners have also special social mobility, for example by being able to become members of two other instutions: the government and the parliament (that is, politicians). Fifth, and most incredibly, imedicine's has even special legal power to influence the change of a person's legal status: some members of imedicine (specially doctors, and even more particularly psychiatrists) have the power to change someone's legal status from legally apt to legally insane, for example. Finally, and thiserits special attention, imedicine's has powerful connections to other institutions, including the government (when I say "government", I aways mean the executive branch of a state) and the parliament, but also the pharmaceutic industry (which is also an institution, as you can reflect on your own).

Of course, imedicine varies (a little) across the globe, but in most countries it is present, exactly as I described above, and it is always powerful. Actually, the very fact that it has a global, ubiquitous presence, with only minor variations across the countries, confers to imedicine a lot of power, and also a lot of... trust! Remember: it's something that has social and legal backup (globally!) and is simply everywhere in the world (and, let me add: is helped by a lot of massive propaganda), so it's really, really easy to forget to question it! By the way, that (questioning it) is exactly what we're going to do in the next few posts of this series.