The Pandemic, Patient Advocacy, and the Importance of Thinking Comment on "The Rise of the Consucrat"

Abstract

The profound inadequacies of Western modernist ways of thinking have been revealed by the intimately connected catastrophes of climate destruction, and more recently, the coronavirus crisis. The pandemic has forced us to notice deepening inequalities and has generated troubling questions about its causes, and who and what can be sacrificed in a pandemic. The analysis offered in Evelyn de Leeuw’s essay "The rise of the consucrat" suggests that the particular type of patient advocates she calls consucrats are unlikely to engage in thinking together about these urgent questions. If anything, due to their narrow biomedical focus and alliances with the pharmaceutical industry, they are likely to facilitate catastrophe capitalism. However, within the field of patient advocacy, there is a diversity of ways of thinking, occasionally leading to bitter contention. A number of terms is needed to reflect this diversity. One group of patient advocates who have come to the fore in recent times might be called medical cosmopolitans, or cosmedics, those who are challenging opportunistic catastrophe capitalism during the pandemic and advocating for global access to essential medicines. Forcing us to notice our deep interdependencies and entanglements, the pandemic has revealed how ludicrous it is to think about patients as consumers, and the need to think about and imagine more-than-human patient advocacy.

Everyday information behavior during the “new normal” of the Covid-19 pandemic: approaching the notions of experiential and local knowledge

“…As in personal communications, in public spaces people tacitly cooperate in adjusting prevention measures provided by the authorities to specific situations and contexts. According to O’Donovan (2021), the pandemic has put the focus on individual health heavily relying on others to minimize the risk of infection, what she calls interdependence, explaining the importance attached to this collaborative attitude.…”

Consucrats and Pathocrats: The Prequel, Quel, and Sequel; A Response to the Recent Commentaries

“…My ranting might have been seen as the sales pitch of a raincoat saleswoman in the desert. But fortunately O’Donovan, 2 DeCampet al 3 and Keeling 4 were gracious enough to think and argue along with me.…”

“…They all challenged, to some extent, my framing of the phenomenon, and my neologising the consucrat. They not only criticised the notion for it being too derogatory 2 (in line with the femocrat and abocrat), but also suggested an expansion of my casting. Keeling extends the argument and proposes the importance of an analysis of the ‘profecrat’ – professional service representatives.…”

“…Part of the effectiveness (and nature of true representation) indeed is agency of actors – and the mastery of the critical tools of agency: language and semiotics. I was pleased (and philosophically a bit dumb-founded, I admit) to see O’Donovan’s 2 reference to the work of Donna Haraway, and in particular to her casting of the Chthulucene 11 as a vast, interconnected and intersectional environment. O’Donovan capably applies this tentacled notion to a world of pandemics, healthcare system exuberance and collapse, and planetary climate change crises.…”

“…I have covered the prequel to this episode and need to set up you, the audience, for the sequel. Where are the consucrats, profecrats, and O’Donovan’s cosmedics 2 heading?…”