Zola on Medicine as an Institution of Social Control

Today I came across the sociologist Irving Zola’s 1972 essay “Medicine as an institution of social control” and I was struck by how relevant it is for many contemporary public health debates, such as the war on drugs, the COVID-19 pandemic and geroscience.  

An excerpt:

Medicine is becoming a major institution of social control, nudging aside, if not incorporating, the more traditional institutions of religion and law. It is becoming the new repository of truth, the place where absolute and often final judgments are made by supposedly morally neutral and objective experts. And these judgments are made not in the name of virtue or legitimacy but in the name of health. Moreover, this is not occurring through the political power physicians hold or can influence, but is largely an insidious and often undramatic phenomenon accomplished by "medicalizing" much of daily living, by making medicine and the labels "healthy" and "ill" relevant to an ever increasing part of human existence.

....….From sex to food, from aspirins to clothes, from driving your car to riding the surf, it seems that under certain conditions, or in combination with certain other substances or activities or if done too much or too little, virtually anything can lead to certain medical problems. In short, I at least have finally been convinced that living is injurious to health. This remark is not meant as facetiously as it may sound. But rather every aspect of our daily life has in it elements of risk to health. 

Cheers, 

Colin