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Biomedical subjects

K Finkler

Publications and source records attributed to K Finkler.

12 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed2001

The kin of the gene: the medicalization of family and kinship in American Society.

In the past several decades there has been an explosion of research in genetics and on genetic inheritance. This new genetics is part of contemporary biomedicine and forecasts great advances in alleviating disease and prolonging human life. It also encompasses notions about biological family and kinship relations. I propose that with the advent of the new genetics, family and kinship are being medicalized. I explore the ways in which explanations of the inheritance of genetic disease influence people's understandings of family and kin and both reflect and conflict with broader current sociocultural processes. The discussion includes a brief overview of the anthropological study of kinship, the meaning of family and kinship in contemporary society, the concept of medicalization and its implications for people's lives as seen through narratives and concludes with an analysis the significance of the medicalization of family and kinship in present-day society.

Family↗
PubMed2000

Diffusion reconsidered: variation and transformation in biomedical practice, a case study from Mexico.

This paper focuses on biomedical transformations in an economically developing nation and poses the question, what are the variant and invariant aspects of biomedical practice, using empirical data from Mexico? I propose that when infectious disease predominated, biomedicine may have been uniformly practiced the world over, but with the ascent of chronic disease of unknown etiology, certain aspects of biomedical practice, especially diagnoses and causality, become reinterpreted culturally and idiosyncratically. The findings of the case study also illuminate current theories of globalization and earlier anthropological theories of diffusion as well as issues concerning the social constructivist perspective.

Anthropology, Cultural↗
PubMed1996

Factors influencing patient perceived recovery in Mexico.

The aim of this paper is twofold: first, to present empirical findings, using data drawn from a comprehensive two year study of biomedical practice and patients perceptions of treatment and recovery done in a Mexico City public hospital, identifying specific aspects of the doctor-patient relationship that impact on patient perceived recovery. Second, and flowing from the first, the objective is to consider broader theoretical issues relevant to the doctor-patient relationship, the role it plays in the healing process and in biomedical practice, especially in a developing nation such as Mexico. The paper is divided into two sections: in Section I, the problem is defined and the methodology and findings are described, employing statistical and qualitative analyses. While enormous importance has been given to the doctor-patient relationship in biomedicine, the results of the study using statistical analysis, reveal that only particular components of the physician-patient encounter significantly influence differential treatment outcomes. In Section II the significance of the findings are discussed and theoretical issues are addressed bearing on the physician-patient relationship, and patients' perceptions of treatment. To illuminate the differential perceptions of treatment outcomes by patients with non-life-threatening disorders, the concept of life's lesions is proposed.

Acute Disease↗
PubMed1989

The universality of nerves.

The focus on nerves addresses the universalist-particularist debate and illuminates the differential experience of nerves between men and women. Using illustrative materials from Mexico and the United States, the hypothesis is advanced that the experience of nerves is not a culture-bound syndrome but is embodied distress, universally experienced by all human beings. Its diffuse symptomatology signals the embodiment of generalized adversity and recreates in the internal world of the body the perceived disorder of the external world. The important task for medical anthropology is to identify the processes by which embodied distress becomes transformed differentially into specific symptomatologies along gender lines. Cross-cultural data are needed to test the proposition.

Cross-Cultural Comparison↗
PubMed1986

The social consequence of wellness: a view of healing outcomes from micro and macro perspectives.

Using field data from Mexican Spiritualist healing, this article focuses on the relationship between treatment outcomes at the individual and social levels. Two issues are explored 1) to what degree do persons treated by Spiritualist healing techniques fit into the wider society of which they are part, and 2) what effects does a given healing system exert on socioeconomic and political arrangements? The discussion brings into bold relief the contradictions embedded in Spiritualist healing techniques and rituals when studied from micro and macro perspectives. Using physiological and social analysis, the author addresses the reasons why individuals participate in Spiritualist healing and rituals, despite the resultant reproduction of socioeconomic and political forms that are contrary to the participants' concerns and interests and that may also be illness producing. By way of conclusion, it is suggested that, on a macro level, healing systems of the Spiritualist kind tend to perpetuate the socioeconomic and political systems.

Female↗
PubMed1985

Symptomatic differences between the sexes in rural Mexico.

This paper addresses the problem of the differential presentation of illness by women and men in two Spiritualist temples and a physician's office situated in rural Mexico. Women's morbidity raises the broader anthropological questions of the interplay between symptomatic expression and women's unequal status in the social structure, their cognitive evaluation of specific life experiences, cultural etiological explanations and Western models of dysphoria. Symptoms presented by patients in different health care delivery sites are compared and case vignettes of patients' illnesses and attributions are presented to demonstrate the ways in which culturally constructed illness attributions and illness expressions comprise a somatic grammar for the articulation of experimental distress. The sick population is compared with a control group of healthy women to highlight the socio-cultural and psychosocial variables that promote illness in women from the same sociocultural strata of rural Mexico. Collective understandings of the role of life events and emotional expression in illness attributions legitimize somatization as a coping style under adverse existential conditions.

Adult↗
PubMed1984

[Digital subtraction angiography with dynamic color function images].

The authors present for the first time the principles and initial results of a laboratory pilot plant with which parametric colour images can be produced in real time. These images are digital function images of the type originally made widely known by Höhne et al. The colour function images can be produced during conventional digital subtraction angiography (DSA) practically as a sideline, that is to say, with a minimum of time and effort, as a parallel product. Despite the fact that the course of the functional processes can be visualised dynamically, the only feature required is the storage capacity of a single digital TV screen image. Of course, the colour function image is not a substitute for exact quantitative evaluations. However, it does furnish a rapid survey of haemodynamic processes for a multitude of patients in routine diagnosis.

Analog-Digital Conversion↗
PubMed1981

Non-medical treatments and their outcomes. Part two: Focus on adherents of spiritualism.

This article is the second of a two-part discussion of non-medical treatment outcomes based upon follow-ups of patients at a Spiritualist temple situated in a rural region of Mexico. The first part of the analysis focussed on two of three categories of patients seeking treatment there (i.e., habitual temple users and first comers). Unlike these two categories of patients who are not believers in spiritualism, the present concern is with the category of patients (i.e., regulars) who identify Spiritualism as their religion and believe in Spiritualist ideology. These patients require separate consideration because, unlike the others, they are exposed to several Spiritualist therapeutic modalities which influence treatment outcomes. Follow-ups of these patients reveal the dialectical relationship and the gradual nature of the healing process. Spiritualist treatment outcomes are assessed by an interplay of physiological, psychological, sociological, and cultural paradigms. The hypothesis is advanced that while Spiritualist healers frequently fail to eliminate patients' subjectively perceived symptoms, the therapies to which these patients are subject alter cognition by facilitating pain tolerance and promote response to cultural symbols employed by temple healers. Examination of treatment outcomes of these patients also calls attention to syndromes which fail to respond to Spiritualist therapy including psychotic episodes. A brief comparison is made between Spiritualist treatment outcome and psychotherapy which leads to the conclusion that Spiritualists succeed no less than the latter in eliminating the sick role, restoring the individual's capacities, and eliminating the feeling of "being sick."

Adult↗
PubMed1980

Non-medical treatments and their outcomes.

This article focuses on outcomes of Spiritualist treatments based upon a series of follow-up studies of patients who came to a Spiritualist temple situated in a rural region of Mexico. Categories of temple patients and conditions under which they resort to alternate therapeutic regimes are also examined. Follow-ups reveal that Spiritualist healers fail more than they succeed to treating their patients. The data suggest that therapeutic benefits from Spiritualist healing tend to occur in four types of disorders--simple diarrheas, simple gynecological disorders, somatized syndromes and minor psychiatric disorders. The findings suggest that successful treatment outcomes are effected not only by concrete manipulation of physiological symptoms but by symbolic manipulation as well. That is, for a therapeutic regime to do its job it must confront cultural imperatives and employ cultural symbols relevant to the removal of the sick role. An unexpected finding of the study reveals that, in the Mexican case, the cultural imperatives relate to cleaning and purification, mediated by tactile communication, which serve symbolically to terminate the sick role.

Adult↗
PubMedDate not supplied

A theory of life's lesions: a contribution to solving the mystery of why women get sick more than men.

In recent decades there has been an explosion of scholarship dealing with all aspects of women's existence, including gender differences. Whatever one's theoretical position regarding gender differences there is ample empirical evidence to show that rates of morbidity differ between men and women in contemporary society. A paradox exists that although women may live longer they tend to experience non-life-threatening conditions more than men do. What lies behind differential morbidity among women and men remains puzzling. In this paper the author attempts to address this puzzle by proposing the concept of life's lesions. It is proposed that women more than men experience life's lesion because they are caught in situations of unresolved contradictions and moral quandaries more than men. A case history from Mexico illustrates the theoretical proposition.

Adult↗