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They want their
doctor to act as lawyer and priest. As a lawyer, the doctor exempts the
patient from his normal duties and enables him to cash in on the insurance
fund he was forced to build. As a priest, he becomes the patient's
accomplice in creating the myth that he is an innocent victim of biological
mechanisms rather than lazy, greedy, or envious deserter of a social
struggle over the tools of production. Social life becomes a giving and
receiving of therapy: medical, psychiatric, pedagogic, or geriatric.
Claiming access to treatment becomes a political duty, and medical
certification a powerful device for social control." Ivan Illich |