‘Biomedicine’ in Anthropological Literature. The Career of a Concept between Analysis and Polemics

Abstract

'Biomedicine' in Anthropological Literature. The Career of a Concept between Analysis and Polemics During its career in North American social sciences and anthropology since the late 1960s the concept of 'biomedicine' acquired a large variety of meanings, sometimes even contradictory ones. Originating in research on biological and medical phenomena in technical areas like nuclear weapons, space flight, informatics or engineering, the term 'biomedical' entered politics and the social sciences, especially medical anthropology. Here it could mean medical research methods derived from biology as opposed to behavioural research or social sciences in general, the complex of Western health care in non-Western countries and the reductionism and alleged Cartesian dualism of its approach -the opposite of traditional, religious, holistic and psychic views and treatment of illness. Oscillating between the levels of anthropological research or analysis and of practical health care delivery, intra-and crosscultural perspectives and affirmative and critical attitudes the term has to be carefully considered in any reading of past and recent literature. The rather late German reception included replacing the term Schulmedizin born of older controversies on naturopathy, as well as naming the more somatic part of illness and medicine-as opposed to psychic or social aspects-and serving as the criticised object of many feminist and post-colonial studies on health.Keywords: concept of biomedicine, history of medical anthropology, critique of medicine, medical system, ethnomedicine Schlüsselwörter: Begriff der Biomedizin, Geschichte der Medizinethnologie, Medizinkritik, Medizinisches System, EthnomedizinHeute wird mit Biomedizin innerhalb der akademischen Medizin ein eher unscharf umschriebener Bereich von Forschung benannt, der sich vor allem molekularbiologischer Methoden und Modelle bedient. Demgegenüber war dieses Wort seit den späten 1970er Jahren in der nordamerikanischen medical anthropology 1 zum umfassenden Oberbegriff für (fast) alles geworden, was an Medizin mit staatlicher Förderung aus der westlichen Welt in andere Erdteile exportiert wird. Zugleich geriet es zum Kampfbegriff in der Kritik bestimmter Tendenzen der an den Naturwissenschaften orientierten Medizin. Diese folgenreiche fachpolitische Etablierung eines ursprünglich analytischen Begriffs mit ihren starken Bedeutungsvariationen erweist sich als aufschlussreich für

The seamless web of next generation sequencing and Covid-19

“…In the long run, the question arises whether the existing biomedical web (for a critical analysis of this term and its use, see Cambrosio and Keating 2003;Bruchhausen 2010) of which NGS is a part can address all possibilities for pandemic prevention and management. For example, whole-genome sequencing has pointed to the origin of the virus from animal populations.…”