This essay challenges the idea of progress as technological development in relation to medicine by focusing on people rather than things. It analyzes how the prevalence of such an idea of progress leads contemporary societies to a technofetishism that degrades community life and medical practice, contributing to the medicalization of social life. It is argued that the realization of technological potentialities depends on their forms of use, that the main motive of technological development is unlimited profit, and the priority developments are those that enhance social control which maintains the status quo. Intelligence as an intelligence quotient is criticized by proposing it as an attribute of the human being as a whole, manifested in the ways of thinking and acting of human beings in their circumstances, where affectivity and critical thinking are essential for their development; it is emphasized that its antecedent is the harmonic concert of planetary life, which contrasts with the prevailing human disharmony. It is proposed that artificial intelligence is the latest creation of technofetishism, which deposits vital attributes in technology, and that its use will accentuate the degradation of human and planetary life. Another idea of medical progress is proposed, based on forms of organization that is conducive to the development of inquisitive, critical, and collaborative skills that promote permanent improvement, whose distant horizon is dignified progress: the spiritual, intellectual, moral, and convivial sublimation of collectivities in harmony with the planetary ecosystem.
Este ensayo cuestiona, a propósito de la medicina, la idea de progreso como desarrollo tecnológico al centrarlo en las personas no en las cosas. Se analiza cómo el predominio de tal idea de progreso convierte a las sociedades actuales al tecno-fetichismo que degrada la vida comunitaria y la práctica médica contribuyendo a la medicalización de la vida social. Se argumenta: que la realización de las potencialidades tecnológicas depende de sus formas de uso; que el móvil principal del desarrollo tecnológico es el lucro sin límites y que los desarrollos prioritarios son los que potencian el control social que mantiene el statu quo. Se critica la idea de inteligencia como cociente intelectual al proponerla como atributo del ser humano como un todo, manifiesto en las formas pensar y proceder de las personas en sus circunstancias, donde la afectividad y el pensamiento crítico son imprescindibles para su desarrollo. Se destaca que su antecedente es el concierto armónico de la vida planetaria contrastante con la disarmonía humana imperante. Se plantea que la inteligencia artificial es la más reciente hechura del tecno-fetichismo que deposita en la tecnología atributos vitales y que sus formas de uso acentuarán la degradación de la vida humana y planetaria. Se propone otra idea de progreso médico basado en formas de organización propicias para el desarrollo de aptitudes inquisitivas, críticas y colaborativas que impulsen la superación permanente, cuyo horizonte lejano es el progreso dignificante: sublimación espiritual, intelectual, moral y convivencial de las colectividades en armonía con el ecosistema planetario.

This essay questions, with regard to medicine, the idea of progress as technological development by focusing on people rather than things. It analyzes how the predominance of such an idea of progress converts today\'s societies to techno-fetishism that degrades community life and medical practice, contributing to the medicalization of social life. It is argued that the realization of technological potentialities depends on their forms of use; that the main motive of technological development is unlimited profit and that priority developments are those that enhance the social control that maintains the status quo. The intelligence as an intelligence quotient is criticized by proposing it as an attribute of the human being as a whole, manifested in the ways of thinking and proceeding of people in their circumstances, where affectivity and critical thinking are essential for their development; it is emphasized that its antecedent is the harmonic concert of planetary life that contrasts with the prevailing human disharmony. It is proposed that artificial intelligence is the most recent creation of techno-fetishism that deposits vital attributes in technology and that its forms of use will accentuate the degradation of human and planetary life. Another idea of medical progress is proposed, based on forms of organization conducive to the development of inquisitive, critical and collaborative skills that promote permanent improvement, whose distant horizon is dignifying progress: spiritual, intellectual, moral and convivial sublimation of collectivities in harmony with the planetary ecosystem.
Este ensayo cuestiona, a propósito de la medicina, la idea de progreso como desarrollo tecnológico al centrarlo en las personas y no en las cosas. Se analiza cómo el predominio de tal idea de progreso convierte a las sociedades actuales al tecno-fetichismo que degrada la vida comunitaria y la práctica médica contribuyendo a la medicalización de la vida social. Se argumenta que la realización de las potencialidades tecnológicas depende de sus formas de uso, que el móvil principal del desarrollo tecnológico es el lucro sin límites, y que los desarrollos prioritarios son los que potencian el control social que mantiene el statu quo. Se critica la idea de inteligencia como cociente intelectual al proponerla como atributo del ser humano como un todo, manifiesto en las formas pensar y proceder de las personas en sus circunstancias, donde la afectividad y el pensamiento crítico son imprescindibles para su desarrollo. Se destaca que su antecedente es el concierto armónico de la vida planetaria contrastante con la disarmonía humana imperante. Se plantea que la inteligencia artificial es la más reciente hechura del tecno-fetichismo que deposita en la tecnología atributos vitales, y que sus formas de uso acentuarán la degradación de la vida humana y planetaria. Se propone otra idea de progreso médico basado en formas de organización propicias para el desarrollo de aptitudes inquisitivas, críticas y colaborativas que impulsen la superación permanente, cuyo horizonte lejano es el progreso dignificante: sublimación espiritual, intelectual, moral y convivencial de las colectividades en armonía con el ecosistema planetario.

To identify the sociocultural roots that explain the higher frequency of diagnoses of depression and/or anxiety and the prescription of psychotropic drugs in women, in order to propose a preliminary explanatory framework for the investigation of gender inequalities in mental health and its medicalization. Qualitative study with a descriptive-interpretive design, through in-depth interviews conducted in January and February 2021. Interviews were held in various cities of the Basque Country, Barcelona and Madrid. 12 experts in gender and mental health from the clinical (Primary Care and Mental Health), academic and associative fields. Intentional sampling, following the snowball technique, until covering the diversity of previously identified profiles and the saturation of the discourse. An analysis of thematic content was carried out starting from a critical-realistic epistemological perspective. The main dimensions to explain gender inequalities in diagnoses of depression or anxiety and prescription of psychoactive drugs were: 1) the material and symbolic subordination of women, 2) the role of «psi» sciences in the pathologization of the feminine identity, 3) the epistemological and androcentric biases of biomedicine, and 4) the active agency of women in medicalization processes. The reduction of gender inequalities in the diagnoses and prescription of psychotropic drugs will require joint intervention at the clinical, community and structural levels that, from a feminist perspective, manage to reverse the socioeconomic, symbolic and epistemic vulnerability of women.

OBJECTIVE: The prevalence of premenstrual discomfort among Spanish women is very high, and has a negative impact on their quality of life. By adopting the biopsychosocial approach, this study aims to understand women\'s experiences and insights, delve further into their beliefs and attitudes towards premenstrual syndrome and menstrual suppression, and to identify their proposals in order to adapt healthcare professionals\' response to their needs and demands.
METHODS: A qualitative study was conducted based on individual in-depth interviews with 16 women located in the Granada region. Purposive sampling was made using theoretical profiles. Informed consent was given. The study included data assessment, investigator triangulation, and a literature review.
RESULTS: Premenstrual discomfort has an impact on physical and psychological health, disrupting daily lives and resulting in self-medication. Healthcare is considered deficient, since remedies are limited to medicalisation, but the source of the discomfort is not investigated. Different beliefs about the premenstrual syndrome (PMS) were found: PMS is inherent to menstrual cycle and cannot be avoided; PMS is the result of endogenous factors (such as genetics, defects or biochemical and hormonal disorders); exogenous factors (such as stress, eating habits, or exercise); the science and industry describe and treat PMS as a disease. Menstrual suppression is considered an option by women with children, though there is reticence due to the side effects found. Health education programmes for women are proposed, as well as the appropriate training for health professionals in order to overcome the pharmacological approach.
CONCLUSIONS: The biopsychosocial approach helps to determine the perspective of the women, their needs and expectations in order to provide better healthcare services to premenstrual discomfort patients.

Women\'s worse mental health has been shown using both health survey and clinical-based data. Considering that the hypothesis about a greater biological vulnerability of women is inconsistent, unequal living conditions between men and women, together with hegemonic models of hegemonic masculinity and femininity emerge as explain factors of these gender inequalities in mental health. The article shows that gender inequalities in mental health, the intersection of different axes of inequality, and the existence of a possible process of medicalization of women\'s mental health, by which health professionals are labeling women more frequently as depressed and anxious given similar mental health status in men and women. Prescription of psychotropic drugs is also of greater intensity in women, given equal need. This reality, moreover, seems to be unequal depending on the age and socioeconomic level of the patients. In recent years, different experiences are being developed aimed at addressing the growing medicalization of mental health from a gender perspective. Given that the phenomenon of medicalization is complex, it is necessary to act and promote changes at political-structural, cultural and health care levels that ultimately reverse gender inequalities in societies and promote non gender-biased healthcare.

In addition to genocide, slavery, and the dispossession of indigenous people, colonialism, as a form of control, meant the suppression of traditional knowledge. The imposition of Christianity, the modern Western paradigm, and modern science that followed perpetrated this suppression. The universal role held by modern science is supported neither by epistemic nor social aspects. It is ineffective and complicit in the collapse of civilization, and it is worsened by comprehensive and unifying ideas to be reduced to an input-process of technological innovation for the benefit of social control industries such as the military, information technology, communication, or health. Furthermore, it suppresses ancestral knowledge related to health and medicine that may be beneficial and must be researched (stimulant medicines). Coupled with the health industry, it promotes the medicalization of life, spreading uncertainty, anxiety, and unease. Therefore, it is an instrument of neocolonialism that imposes its priorities, supplanting problems in subordinated countries, and extracts substantial resources, which is detrimental to social policies and programs. The biggest objection to the universality of modern science is derived from its empiricist and reductionist nature. Through the practically impossible idea of a unifying and explanatory knowledge, it impedes researchers the understanding of the complexity of the world and their historical moment and to act accordingly. It transforms great creative and liberating potential to submissiveness for the interests of capital and its representatives.
El colonialismo, como forma de dominación, significó, además de genocidio, esclavitud o despojo de pueblos originarios, la supresión de saberes tradicionales perpetrada por la imposición del cristianismo, del paradigma moderno occidental y de la ciencia moderna que le siguió. El carácter universal detentado por la ciencia moderna no se sostiene en lo epistémico ni en lo social; es inoperante con y cómplice del colapso civilizatorio; se empobrece de ideas comprensivas e integradoras para reducirse al insumo-proceso de la innovación tecnológica en provecho de las industrias del control social (militar, informática, de comunicación o de la salud); y suprime saberes ancestrales de la esfera de la salud que encierran beneficios y posibilidades que es preciso investigar (medicina estimulante). Aunada a la industria de la salud, impulsa la medicalización de la vida, preñándola de incertidumbre, angustia y desasosiego. Es instrumento del neocolonialismo al imponer sus prioridades, que suplantan las propias de los países subordinados y sustraen cuantiosos recursos en detrimento de políticas y programas sociales. La mayor objeción a la universalidad de la ciencia moderna deriva de su carácter empirista y reduccionista que, al condicionar la imposibilidad práctica de un conocimiento integrador y explicativo, aleja a los investigadores del entendimiento de la complejidad del mundo, de su momento histórico y de actuar en consecuencia, y transforma la gran potencialidad creativa y liberadora de este enorme contingente en docilidad a los designios de los intereses del capital y sus agentes.

The critique of medicine begins at unveiling and specifying its network of predominant logics, ideas and practices: logics of disjunction and reductionism; the health-disease binomial; the natural history of the disease; the medicalization of social life; the dehumanizing technologization of medical practice and reductionist suppressive medicine. It goes on to argue about its role as agents of domination of limitless profit interests and as an expression of the power of the health industry, justifying itself with the proposal of alternatives tending to overcome that network: transdisciplinarity and the concept of organism as hierarchical totality and interacting with its environment, with respect to disjunction and reductionism; the cultural history of the disease in relation to the health-disease binomial and the dehumanizing technologization; good living, the search for spiritual, intellectual, moral and coexistence growth as meaning of human life, as an alternative to the medicalization and antidote of degrading traits and stimulating medicine of the endogenous healing forces of the organism whose foundation of possibility and credibility is the placebo effect as an alternative to suppressive therapy for non-communicable chronic conditions, based on the pharmacological effect with unfailing side effects. It concludes that without an education based on critique, liberating knowledge would hardly accompany and guide the various social groups in the search for an inclusive, pluralistic, egalitarian, fair, solidary and caring of the planetary ecosystem world.
La crítica del quehacer médico como espacio educativo implicó caracterizar el entramado de lógicas, ideas y prácticas prevalentes: la disyunción y el reduccionismo; el binomio salud-enfermedad; la historia natural de la enfermedad; la medicalización de la vida social; la tecnologización deshumanizante de la práctica médica, y la medicina supresora reduccionista. La crítica continúa discutiendo la contribución de ese entramado al control social como agente de la dominación de los intereses de lucro sin límites y como expresión del poder de la industria de la salud, justificándose con la argumentación de alternativas tendientes a superar ese entramado: la lógica transdisciplinaria y el concepto de organismo como totalidad jerarquizada e interactuante con su entorno respecto de la disyunción y el reduccionismo; la historia cultural de la enfermedad como alternativa a la historia natural de la enfermedad y al binomio salud-enfermedad; el bien vivir, la búsqueda de la superación espiritual, intelectual, moral y convivencial que confiere sentido profundo a la vida humana, como alternativa a la medicalización y antídoto de la tecnologización deshumanizante y los rasgos degradantes; la medicina estimulante de fuerzas curativas endógenas para afecciones crónicas no trasmisibles, cuyo fundamento de factibilidad y credibilidad radica en la omnipresencia del efecto placebo con respecto a la medicina supresora, basada en fármacos con efectos secundarios indefectibles. Sin una educación basada en la crítica, difícilmente el conocimiento liberador podrá acompañar y orientar a médicos y otros profesionales a organizarse en la búsqueda, desde su ámbito, de un mundo inclusivo, igualitario, justo, solidario y cuidadoso del ecosistema planetario.

In this article, I trace the most salient features of Mexican families\' complex journeys as they coped with the \"predicament\" of childhood deafness. Framing support seeking through the theoretical lens of pilgrimage brings into focus family introspection and captures their tenacity while facing culture-specific obstacles. Ultimately, families realized their quests were not about \"fixing\" their children\'s hearing, but finding more reliable communication in sign language. Pilgrimage, as a metaphor for the journeys described by participants, helps us understand families\' realizations that the biomedical options most commonly available in Mexico City were of limited efficacy, and reveals collective desire for alternatives to these options.

To live well is a universal human aspiration as well as the ultimate goal of the services that take care of people\'s health. In this paper, two different ideas are discussed about how to achieve it: health care and life project. Part I begins with a detailed account of human degradation and the social inequities responsible for the unprecedented social and cultural breakdown of the actual society. Under this interpretative framework, the medicalization of human life as result of the alienating consumerism is analyzed as well as the excesses it entails from both health care institutions and health services users. By exploring the reasons of medicalization, it becomes clear that its influence in our actual lifestyles has driven us to be obsessed with being healthy and horrified of diseases; this works as a very effective mean of social control from the powers that maintain and deepen inequality. As such, the first to benefit from it is the health industry. This constant concern for health takes us away from our goal of living well since it causes anxiety, insecurity and disquietude. In conclusion, different considerations about the inconveniences of devoting all our energies towards health care are offered and it is suggested that instead we all have the responsibility of creating a more hospitable and inclusive world.

With the appearance of Homo sapiens, the biological order was gradually replaced by the anthropocentric cultural order (CO), in which traditions, appreciations, preferences and desires for possession and domination guided their interactions with nature (predation or care), within the group (ranks, classes) and with others groups (commerce, wars). Current CO, characterized by unlimited profit interests, extreme wealth concentration and inequality where moral degradation hits rock bottom and planetary ecosystem is devastated, shows a collapsed civilization with a background of a global media controlled anesthetized societies. Regarding the health field, control works by prevalent ideas and practices: sickness as a strange object to the body, health as an imperative vital ideal and technologically based suppressive medicine shaping life\'s medicalization, main control \"device\" and health industry support. Other alternative ideas and practices are discussed: sickness as an inner harmony disturbance or as a differentiated and particular way of human beings, and stimulating medicine, that targets sick people with the purpose of strengthening and harmonizing them so they may recover, alleviate or appease. Considerations about possibilities and significance of stimulating medicine are made at the end.