On Tue, Sep 15, 2020 at 04:47 PM, Andrew Stewart wrote: > > Can one even tabulate the number of fatalities that would result from > abandoning chronic healthcare technologies like dialysis machines, iron > lungs, oxygen tanks for asthmatics, or premature infant incubators?
The problem with life-saving or successfull technologies in general is that once it is introduced it can not be stopped and abandoned. Not in an ethical way. It is what Ronald Wright in A Short History of Progress calls a progress trap. Some primitivists call for abandoning large-scale organisation technologies which i don't endorse. The philosopher and social critic Ivan Illich is highly critical of the medical industry in his book Medical Nemesis. He calls hospitals, prisons, schools etc.. 'total institutions'. "The medical establishment has become a major threat to health." with this opening assertion, Ivan Illich - one of the most brilliant social critics of our time - launches a devastating analysis into "iatrogenesis" (doctor-made illness), examing what medicine really does, as opposed to the myth that has been built around it." -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. View/Reply Online (#1609): https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/1609 Mute This Topic: https://groups.io/mt/76796153/21656 -=-=- POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. -=-=- Group Owner: [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://groups.io/g/marxmail/leave/8674936/1316126222/xyzzy [[email protected]] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
