In it but not of it: relationships of medicine with government and politics.
Medicine evolved in parallel with religion. Its practitioners developed their skills by selection, training, and culling. Codes of loyalties, behavior, and ethics emerged. This made them distinct. In common with government and politics, medicine has to do with the common weal. Still, the relationship of patients with physicians is based on a different kind of agreement than that with government or politics. Although physicians must participate in specific functions of government and politics related to their tasks, they act as a body that has specific limitations and rights (fuero). This is the backbone of medicine as a profession. Current tendencies favor the strengthening of governments and economic realities tend to favor the submission of physicians to those that control means of payment. A further enhancement of these trends might mark the end of medicine as a liberal profession. Individual decision by physicians to maintain a proud and necessary heritage and the creation of an effective World Medical College are 2 strategies that might thwart the danger of medicine's demise.
Department of Dermatology and Immunology, Vargas School of Medicine, Central University of Venezuela, 1050-Ciudad Universitaria, 1051 Caracas, Venezuela. mgoihmanyahr@yahoo.com
Mauricio
M
Goihman-Yahr
D006076:Government; D006801:Humans; D008511:Medicine; D011057:Politics