Western medicine: An instrument of Imperialism

This positivist approach to medical studies is the historical research methodology of Western medicine. Western medicine has been used as an instrument of Imperialism, spreading the domination of a monopolistic form of health inquiry and the propagation of images of the European and the non-European (the Other).

The manner, in which, most diseases are studied draws on a strict positivist approach that fails to recognize the imperialistic framework that guides research. Western medicine believes that the key to changing health outcomes is to pinpoint the biological etiology of a disease. This method of research is useful for many infectious diseases. However, chronic diseases are multifactorial in nature and call on a multidisciplinary approach of investigation.

Imperialism with its patriarchical foundation cultivated Western medicine to value men as the standard human and women as the other. King (2002) argues that an ideology of Western medicine is the “emerging diseases worldview” that contrasts healthy (Western) and non-healthy (non-Western). This binary ideology supports boundaries between genders, races, classes, and nation states. Western medicine has historically operated with this imperialistic gaze and health delivery and health outcomes have, therefore, suffered for the individuals that are non-Western/marginalized/female in relation to the individuals that are Western/privileged/male.

In the United States, for example, African American mothers suffer poor maternal morbidity and mortality in general. In the Atlantic Slave Trade, Africans were forcefully brought to America between the seventeenth and nineteenth century. This commodification of humans stems from the imperialistic strategy of garnering economic gain from the other (non-European). The Atlantic Slave Trade created African Diaspora, a culture influenced by mass displacement, discontinuity with their native homeland, their culture, and their community. African Americans today face the struggle of coping with this legacy of imperialistic intrusion on their identity and history.

Western medicine continues to focus on pathophysiological processes of diseases and ignores contextual factors of patients' lives. Economic, social, historical, environmental, and psychological factors of patients' lives are de-emphasized. How has this history of displacement and discontinuity affected African Americans today? How has Western medicine, a historical tool of imperialism, affected health outcomes of African Americans today? These are questions that continue to go unanswered.

Western medicine continues to be an instrument of imperialism, propagating a form of health inquiry that sustains the historical order of healthy (Western/European/white/privileged) and non-healthy (non-Western, non-European/brown/marginalized). Health disparities persist nationally and globally due to the systematic persistence of disregarding broader contextual factors and power relationships of patients' lives. The embodiment of disease is more than a biological process. Simplifying disease to be independent of the power relations that sustain hierarchical divisions in race, class, and gender, helps Western medicine continue the use of imperialistic frameworks for health inquiry. Consequently, the marginalized will suffer poorer morbidity and mortality outcomes.

References

King, N.B. (2002). Security, disease, commerce: Ideologies of postcolonial global health. Social Studies of Science, 32, 763-789.