特定病因論再考

概要

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Etiology is the study of the cause of disease or illness. The development of bacteriology in the 19th century saw the corresponding development of "specific etiology", which postulates that infectious diseases are caused by pathogenic organisms, such as the tubercle bacillus, that invade the human body and bring about a failure of homeostasis of the human being. Specific etiology has for two centuries been the central dogma of modern medicine used to explain the causality of numerous diseases, such as infectious diseases, cancers, and genetic diseases, by using models of a unique pathogenic agent, a bacteria or virus; a cancer cell; or an "abnormal" gene as the pathogen of the disease, respectively. The aim of this paper is to criticize the role of specific etiology by examining its social role and logical weaknesses, by examining the deterministic character of the etiology, and by comparing the "pathogen-carrier" ideology derived from the etiology with the pluralistic etiology of hygiene in the 19th century. This paper concludes that specific etiology can easily mislead medical professionals and lay people in that their understanding of "pathogen-carrier" ideology results in their perceiving infected persons as dirty and dangerous as the pathogenic organism itself, with the result that the infected persons are victimized and discriminated against.
2005-10-26