Unit 1: Changing Cause of Diseases

Vocabulary-style flashcards covering the historical shift from germ theory to biomedicalization, key scientific figures, and the social construction of medicine.

Rare Disease

A group of genetic disorders with a prevalence defined as less than $5$ in $10,000$.

Three Explanatory Models of S&T

Technological Determinism, Technological Neutrality, and Social Constructivism.

Social Constructivism

The view that technological development is not following inner logic but is the outcome of negotiations and social processes. Humans, ideas, artifacts are a web of social relations.

Cons:

Technological Determinism

The theory that technology is the primary driver of societal change, shaping social structures and cultural values.

Cons: no space for human error, denies human repsonsibility

Technological Neutrality

Tech is a neutral tool in the hands of users (ppl) → acknowledges humans choice

Tech has no straightforward effect on society

But effect of tech on society is result of our choices

Cons: denies logic of development (we designed, it, it, form and uses, excluding/including ppl)

Methology of STS

1. It could have been otherwise

2. Co-production → society doesn’t determine tech and vice versa

3. Principle of symmetry —> treat all kinds of tech and analyze with the same tools

4. Interventionist approach → seeks to democratize the design, governance, and trajectory of technology by involving stakeholders, researchers, and users in direct, transformative interventions.

Rise of Medicine (1890-1945)

• Focused on the treatment of acute illnesses, communicable diseases, and the establishment of organizational infrastructure.

• specification and legitimization of medicine disciplines

• hospitals built, medical boards

• many surgeries

Medicalization (1940-1985)

• Control of chronic illnesses, biochemistry, and the routinization of medical care.

• looking into BMDZ 1 making life processes medicalized

• addictions, sexuality, balding, into medical issues

• routine checkups

• doctors are authoritative

• public vs. private insurance, practices

Biomedicalization (1980 - Present)

• Focused on enhancement, molecular biology, genetics, and the medicalization of risk factors.

• digitalization

• technoscientific interventions and drugs

• individual responsibility (BMDZ 5)

• informercials and ads direct to consumer

• alternative medicine

Germ Theory

The breakthrough knowledge that specific microorganisms (bacteria, viruses, fungi, protozoa) cause specific diseases.

• targeted prevention

• justifies lab medical science

Louis Pasteur

Scientist who demonstrated in the $1850s-1860s$ that microorganisms cause fermentation and spoilage, leading to the process of heating liquids to kill microbes. Pasteurization, sanitization, sterilization.

• extends vaccine life but weakening microbes

Robert Koch

Researcher who provided proof that bacteria cause disease by developing a framework linking specific microbes to specific diseases, such as $Bacillus$ $anthracis$ to anthrax.

Koch’s Postulates

1. Prescence → microbes must be found in abundance in organism suffering from disease

2. Isolation → must be isolated from diseased organism and grown in pure culture

3. Infection → cultured microorganism must cause same disease when introd into healthy susceptible organism

4. Re-Isolation → microorganism must be re-isolated from a newly encultured disease, experimental host and ided to be identical to original causes of agent

Attenuation

A scientific technique used by Pasteur to extend vaccination by weakening microbes.

Chicken Cholera Vaccine

Developed around $1880$, this is recognized as the first germ-theory vaccine.

Alexander Fleming

The scientist who observed in $1928$ that $Penicillium$ mold inhibited bacterial growth, eventually leading to penicillin.

Antipyretics and Analgesics

Early pharmaceuticals that treated symptoms rather than microbial causes.

History of Medicine and Pharmacy

A prior explanation for disease based on miasma ('bad air' or environmental causes), which was replaced by germ theory. Treated symptoms not causes.

Theory of BMDZ Adele Clark

1. Biopolitical Economy → describes the new economic and political structures of medicine. Done in context of politics, so for profit.

2. Surveillance and Risk → involves how surveillance shapes perceptions of risk in health contexts. Encourages under the armies if data collection through organization and elaboration.

3. Technoscientization → interventions, treatments all computerized. molecularization and genetiziation. Ex. genetic maps.

4. Transform knowledge production → see alt medicine now legit. Sources and formats of knowledge consumption. Social media, ads, etc.

5. Transformation of bodies → New forms of technoscientific identities and social groups formed around biological or genetic markers in the era of biomedicalization.