The usual suspects: why techno-fixing dementia is flawed.
Dementia is highly prevalent and up until now, still incurable. If we may believe the narrative that is currently dominant in dementia research, in the future we will not have to suffer from dementia anymore, as there will be a simple techno-fix solution. It is just a matter of time before we can solve the growing public health problem of dementia. In this paper we take a critical stance towards overly positive narratives of techno-fixes by placing our empirical analysis of dementia research protocols and political statements in a framework of technology assessment. From this perspective, it becomes obvious that a techno-fix is just one of many ways to approach societal problems and more importantly that technologies are way less perfect than they are presented. We will argue that this narrow scope, which focusses on the usual suspects for solving illnesses, reduces dementia to organismic aspects, and may be counterproductive in finding a cure for dementia. We conclude with outlining how the narrow scope can be balanced with other narratives and why we should have a reasonable scepticism towards the usual suspects.
Department of Medical Ethics and History of Medicine, Humboldtallee 36, 37073, Göttingen, Germany. karin.jongsma@medizin.uni-goettingen.de.
Karin Rolanda
http://orcid.org/0000-0001-8135-6786
KR
Jongsma
Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Institute of Technology Assessment and Systems Analysis (ITAS), Karlstraße 11, 76133, Karlsruhe, Germany.
Martin
M
Sand
D035843:Biomedical Research / Q000379:methods / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D020811:Biomedical Technology / Q000379:methods; D003704:Dementia / Q000628:therapy*; D006801:Humans; D009426:Netherlands; D011057:Politics; D013673:Technology Assessment, Biomedical / Q000379:methods; D016896:Treatment Outcome
Biomedical; Dementia; Health policy; Narration; Technology assessment