Medical Essay: Rise of Biomedicine in Contemporary British Society

Question

Task: Write a medicalessayof1500 words discussing the rise ofbio-medicine and its relevance to health and illness in contemporaryBritish society.Discuss theories and concepts fromthe sociologyof health inyour essayand supportyouranswer bydrawingon appropriate academic literature.

Answer

Introduction
The current medical essay sheds light on the concept of biomedicine which is the branch of medicine that is connected with the application of biological principles and biochemistry principles to ensure the development of medical research or any other medical practices. Biomedicine has been identified to be the main pillar of the modern health care and diagnostics process that varies based on the severity of the disease. It ensures the identification of the problem that the patients are facing and fixes the problem through the application of medicinal interventions. The existence of biomedicine has been prevalent for a longer duration now and has been a part of the history of medical intervention processes. Its relevance is present in the management of the contemporary health situations in different societal healthcare development prospects. The essay would demonstrate the rise of biomedicine and its relevance in contemporary British Society.

Rise of biomedicine
The rise of biomedicine came into existence by the development of the relationship between medicine and the study of life, which had been highlighted by holding major transformations through the occurrence of physiology and bacteriology.These relationship characteristics went on to become major factors defining the prospects of human disease through diagnosis, treatment identification and classification of the disease according to the cause and effects of the disease. It is important to note that the development of biomedicine has occurred through the transformation of biology and medicine as well as the convergence of both after 1945. The transformation began with the development of a description of the culture of the therapeutic miracle that had initiated the scientific as well as the medical community to develop research against tuberculosis, cardiovascular disease and cancer (Walach, 2020). This led to the formation of the foundation for the initiation of biomedicine.

The post-war era had seen a rise in the complexities in the biomedical characteristic through the intensified research conducted over life science and the hunt for sociological concepts on human health and illness. The concepts complexities defined into theoretical demonstration such as functionalism, conflict theory and symbolic interactions. Functionalism demonstrated that physicians are to be provided with instructions and patients are bound to follow them. It can be noted that the complexities were based on three basic medicine lines are experimental medicine, clinical medicine and social medicine practice, which varied geographically especially focused on local and national contexts. The social medicine practices was characterised by conflict theory, which demonstrated that social inequality defines the quality of health, and the disease intervention is conducted accordingly. Thus, the variations that began to exist among the different laboratories, the clinical settings and the overall health authorities in different countries. The identified changing relationships have further bright changes to the overall study that has been developed on the emergence of biomedicine (Rasmussen, 2018). In between the years, 1945 and 1965 different types of biological experimentation has had occurred which eventually helped in changing the concepts and the prospects of managing the variations in the fields such as embryology and the development of varied studies which proved more difficult in gaining a clear vision of the attachment of genetics and the biochemists’ researches.

Thus, the occurrence of the development in the aspect of life science has led to the existence and the occurrence of the medicinal contribution in holding the incorporation of the new entities and identifying the overall causes and medicines to cure diseases. The prospects involved the identification of the direct impact that is caused by molecular biology on the medical practices, which are further confined to the management of explanatory models with the management of diagnostic tools (Wainberget al. 2018). The transformation had further occurred due to the management of therapeutic target process with the prospect of holding generalization of the overall treatment based models for varied disease such as excel aligning with the use of chemotherapy. This further indicated that the aspects of biomedicine have been continually attributed to the changes in pharmaceutical research leading to the fast scale exploration of biomedicine and further induced its application.

Relevance of biomedicine to health and illness in contemporary British Society
The developments that have occurred in the field of biomedicine have been highly influential to bring in changes and challenges to the changing ideas of nature or the biological existence of any illness or health system in the British Society. The relevance of biomedicine to health and illness in the British Society could be understood through the application and increasing rate of personalized understanding developed on the cause of any disease through selective fragmentation taken into account. The fragmentation also helped in holding management of the classificatory schemes as well as managing the clinical uncertainty that has led to the offering of the new or more successful treatments as needed but existence of statistical data is less (Dumas-Mallet et al. 2017). The developments population research led to the development of fundamental questions on the prospects of the nature of diseases and the overall epistemic authority to hold the management of normative as well as the political significance that has been able to bring out the root cause of the disease concept.This led to the clear demonstration of the symbolic interactions theory, which determined that health and illness are social constructions and the field of biomedicine was significantly defined in the similar manner in the traditional British Society in comparison to the contemporary society. This leads to further indication of the Labelling Theory on Health and Illness, which critically demonstrated that the societal influences projects the perception of a disease and the medical intervention to be carried out on it. The societal views and the labels provided to the suffering of a patient define the application to be followed on medical intervention considerations for each patient on contrary to the biomedical model being applied in the contemporary British Society.

Thus, the health and illness management in the Contemporary British Society and the relevance of biomedicine can be characterised by the existence of the biomedical model. The existence of the biomedical model has been the current dominating model of illness and health in the British society that is being used to elevate the perceptions of health status and is defined through the absence of the illness (Giacaman, 2018). The biomedical model, which is the characterised combination of biomedicine, has been effective in holding certain sets of beliefs increasing the scope of managing health and illness in the current British society. It holds the characterisation that illness and all the symptoms of the illness are caused by changes in the body internally which not the unusual changes are referring to the disease that had occurred. Health is characterized by both mental and physical changes, which involve emotional disturbances holding accountability to the passive recipients of the treatment, and cooperation with the treatment is further maintained accordingly. The human factor addition helps in analytical understanding of the disease and creates the basic prospects of medicinal interventions identifying cure for illness being faced by any individual (Nettleton, 2020). Thus, the relevancy is clearly based on the functioning that is present in the physical as well as the social environment while characterising the necessary consideration for the illness or the health condition being faced.

Conclusion
Thus, there is an identification of a concluding statement that the rise of biomedicine has been a consequence of relevant research that has been developed for ages. The interpretation of the research results in compliance with the human body as well as the overall characteristics of any disease that has been faced or still being faced by an individual's allowed proper establishment of biomedicine. In the current British society as well, the existence of biomedicine has been dominant in holding the attainment of medical interventions for any particular disease.

References
Dumas-Mallet, E., Button, K.S., Boraud, T., Gonon, F. and Munafò, M.R., 2017. Low statistical power in biomedical science: a review of three human research domains. Royal Society open science, 4(2), p.160254.

Giacaman, R., 2018. Reframing public health in wartime: From the biomedical model to the “wounds inside”. Journal of Palestine Studies, 47(2), pp.9-27.

Nettleton, S., 2020.The sociology of health and illness.John Wiley & Sons.

Rasmussen, N., 2018. Biomedicine and its historiography: a systematic review. Handbook of the historiography of biology.Springer, pp.1-21.

Wainberg, M., Merico, D., Delong, A. and Frey, B.J., 2018. Deep learning in biomedicine.Nature biotechnology, 36(9), pp.829-838.

Walach, H., 2020. The Rise of Complementary Medicine and the Materialist Stance of Biomedicine.European Journal for Person Centered Healthcare, 8(1), pp.119-129.