April 2013

Notícia publicada em:

  • 15 de Março de 2013

Theme: Health Technologies: ambivalences and potentialities

Lecturer: Luis Eugenio Portela Fernandes de Souza

Summary:
The model for health care in Brazil can be characterized by the predominance of individualistic , biological centered, healing and hospital centered practices, despite the completeness being one of the principles of the SUS. Perhaps the explanation of the difficulties in transforming attention practices resides in the relationship and role of the  economic and industrial complex of health. In its current configuration, the economic complex of health neglects investment in health promotion technologies and prefers to play and expand the logic of symptomatic and curative care, based on the consumption of procedures.

This setting meets, surely, the economic interests of producers and suppliers of inputs of health-medicines and medical equipment. However, how to justify its hegemony if society believes that this is an inadequate model? Or are there alternatives?

According to Andrew Feenberg, philosopher of technology and professor at British Columbia University, if the model of industrial civilization of contemporary societies is determined by a technological standard that enhances the economic efficiency and the pursuit of private profit, it is possible to think of other standards, based on new values such as social efficiency and solidarity. Current technologies include ambivalences and potentialities that allow its re-adaptation to these new values.

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