The prestigious academic publishing house New York University Press has published a book edited by Ana Marta Gonzalez and Joseph E. Davis, researcher and partner of the Institute for Culture and Society (ICS) of the University of Navarra. The book is To Fix or To Heal. Patient Care, Public Health, and the Limits of Biomedicine, a volume that collects essays on patient care, public health, and the limits of medicine.

The book is framed in the context of modern medicine, which has multiple edges: successful advances, dissatisfaction with the quality of patient care, new challenges such as the aging population or the reappearance of infectious diseases...

In the face of these challenges, the book advocates humanizing medical practices to respond to the social and environmental aspects of health and disease, as well as the individual.

Overcoming reductionist approaches to medical internship

The essays go beyond accounting for the persistence of reductionist approaches and the extension of medicalization to more and more aspects of human life today. The authors shed light on why reductionism persists and why holistic models have failed to gain more presence.

The experts analyze the moral appeal of reductionism, the growing importance given to health and the 'consecration' of individual responsibility as an apparently non-coercive means of intervention and control. In that sense, they advance new lines of criticism of the dominant medical regime, proposing ways to bring medical internship , bioethics and public health closer to their original purposes.

Ana Marta González is principal investigator of project 'Emotional culture and identity' of the ICS, funded by Seguros Zurich, and professor of Philosophy Moral. She is also academic director of the Social Trends Institute.

Joseph E. Davis is Professor of Sociology and director of research of the high school of programs of study Advanced Cultural Studies at the University of Virginia (USA). He is partner of the project 'Emotional culture and identity' of the ICS