A sick culture?

Most of these debates about enhancement versus treatment resemble to me a recapitulation of Original Sin: We begin naïve and innocent, make our ‘mistakes’ be they genetic, developmental or cultural, only to be informed we are actually created sick and then commanded to be well. I think what is important about Elliot’s take on consumer culture in medicine (as are many other readings), is that it describes the extrinsic aspects of creating our present condition and identity in our own minds, as well as other with a great deal of power over us, doctors for instance. It is important to note that there are interests that exist to alleviate medical problems that they themselves had a hand in creating. The selling of the disease is the selling of its treatment. Can negating that first sale then be the cure?

I originally had a totally different concept for what I wanted to write. I was going to argue passionately that alleviating individual suffering, however that individual defines it, should be a general rule for dealing with biopolitics. Amputations for some, new lips and new lipstick for others! The problem is that the types of suffering we are talking about do no exist sui generis, we cannot dissect them away from the society in which they are embedded. Then to what degree can suffering be imposed by society? How does the immediate nociceptive pain of a broken leg stack up against existential woe? We know very well how to cure the former; we seem better at creating the later.

I still think suffering should have primacy in our debates. I also now think that the source of that suffering needs to be examined with an eye towards culture. By analogy to vaccines preventing suffering from certain biological diseases in the individual, is there a sort of cultural vaccination possible against creating distress in others only to sell them relief? No good answers in this post, just questions.