Technology Alienation In Modern Medicine And Its Philosophical Introspection

With the deepening of medical technicalization and the development of medical specialization,the alienation of modern medical technology has been gradually more obvious.The "high cost and low efficiency of medical treatment",the cost of medical service has been skyrocketing while medical quality declining,medical workers has been getting more and more busier and their educational level more and more higher,but patients’ trusts in doctors has been increasingly dissolving,all this have brought modern medicine into unprecedented trouble and crisis,and making people question the advances of medical science.The technological alienation of modern medicine is not only an inevitable issue to China medical reform,but also a thorny and urgent problem to the whole world.The main body of this dissertation consists of 3 parts:The first part has systematically investigated some common concrete facts of medical technological alienation in clinical medical practice.Such as digitization and over-objectivization of diagnostic criteria,undue diagnosis of somatic disease,generalization of mental disease diagnosis,excessive reliance on laboratory examination and imaging examination,overuse or misuse of antibiotics,psychiatric drug abuse,overuse of cardiovascular interventional operation and cesarean section surgery,alienation of human assisted reproductive technology,universal cancer screening of healthy people,alienation of genetic testing technology and over advocacy of vaccination.Besides,the first part has also deeply analyzed the harms caused by medical technological alienation,such as iatrogenic diseases and drug-induced diseases,medical radiation exposure,excessive medical treatment,materialization of doctor-patient relationship,the blurring of medical boundaries,the change of medical subject,the decline of comprehensive judgment ability of doctor,and deprivation of female reproductive autonomy and so on so forth,to highlight the research value of this study.The second part of this study,based on technology alienation theory,social constructivism,materialist dialectics,interest theory and Mach’s principle of economical thought,has made a further exploration on the root causes of medical technological alienation respectively from ontology,epistemology and methodology,and from the perspective of multi-disciplinary,like SSK,Sociology of Science,Philosophy of Technology and biomedicine.The third part,inspired by ecology,system view,technological appropriateness and postmodernism,has put forward several methods or strategies to cope with and prevent medical technological alienation on a theoretical level.The study has shown that medical technological alienation has both characterized by spontaneity and artificiality.The spontaneous alienation has been determined by characteristics of medical technology,such as anti-naturalness,value-ladenness,uncertainty and risk,this all has determined that medical technological alienation is an inevitable outcome of medical technicalization.While the artificial features have told us that medical technological alienation can be reduced or eliminated to some extent.The subject of medical technology is human being.Any technology if it has ignored human’s personality and lost the essence for people,or only to pursue one dimensional technology target will become dissident force to human beings.Discussing alienation phenomena of modern medical technology,exploring the root causes of them,and considering the coping strategies from the philosophical perspective are very meaningful,because not only can they help us correctly understand scientific connotations and practical essence of modern medicine,improve top-level design of medical reform,but also,they can help to regulate the proper use of medical technology and to steadily promote the healthy development of them.