Health as entertainment
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By Marjut Lindberg
At the Finnish Medical Convention held in Helsinki last week, a question was put to the journalists on whether or not the media promotes medicalisation: are people encouraged to seek treatment for traits and characteristics that are not actual diseases?
It was also pondered at the seminar, if the media might be blurring the borders of illness.
The danger of promoting medicalisation in the media has grown, and continues to grow rapidly. The most important reason for this is that health has been turned into a form of entertainment.
About ten magazines appear in Finland, whose main content comprises illness, health promotion, as well as food recipes and exercise advice that can be easily linked with health.
Health entertainment has come to stay in daily newspapers as well. In all of the larger newspapers, there are pages and columns especially dedicated to health, in addition to other news. Some traditional automotive and technology magazines aimed at a male readership have been spared the onslaught of health entertainment.
There is nothing wrong with health entertainment as such. People find health interesting - especially their own. However, from the point of view of medicalisation, the line is quite blurred and difficult to visualise.
An article about the changes brought about in a woman’s body by menopause is pure fact-based journalism, but does it become medicalisation journalism when the article includes information on the benefits of hormone treatment? The same applies to writing about men’s impotence problems.
Most journalists feel that writing about cosmetic surgery in a tone of reverence is medicalisation at its worst. However, articles appear in publications at regular intervals on clinics in Tallinn specialised in cosmetic surgery, including their addresses and price information.
Medicalisation in the media is not limited to health entertainment or the content of news pages, in which the latest treatments for stage fright are presented. Medicalisation appears surprisingly frequently in sports pages that are generally seen to be the most masculine of all.
Using medical science to improve sports results is medicalisation. Banned medicalisation is known as doping, but there is plenty that is permitted. It would be interesting to know what all permissible forms of medicalisation are used in the various sports.
Doping is fairly universally condemned, but antidoping is considered to be an important means of enforcement.
Antidoping - if anything - is medicalisation in its purest form. The testers with their pee cans and test tubes chase after athletes to get samples for analysis. The samples are analysed using methods developed by medical science.
With healthy athletes, nobody is looking for illnesses, nor are the samples taken to follow up on treatment with medication. The methods of medicine are used exclusively to look for banned substances. The activity has no links with the treatment of illnesses - any more than breast augmentation has anything to do with healing heart surgery.
About EUR 1.5 million in tax revenues straight from the state budget are spent each year for the testing of healthy athletes, and maintaining Finland’s Antidoping Committee. A similar sum was used by the Oulu Central Hospital to cut the surgery queue by 1,500 patients. In addition to the a million and a half, sports clubs and federations spend massive amounts of money and energy on education work. The clubs and the federations also get support from tax revenue.
One of the most important tasks of the media is to seek out and expose wrongs, and to raise them into debate in society. Taking methods of treatment developed by medicine and using them for non-medical purposes is one of them.
Medicalisation has gone so far that it cannot be stopped by means used by the media, or by any other means. What remains is a debate on who needs to pay the costs of medicalisation, and what ethical problems might arise from medicalisation.
If people become interested in their health and have themselves treated, possibly without good reason, it might not be a big problem, if they would spend their own money on the additional treatment.
Unnecessary treatment and use of medications is unfortunately not without its risks; some can become ill as a result.
If tax revenues are used for maximising comfort, and for pursuing healthy people, the reasons for it need to be very good indeed. In principle, the attitude toward them should be negative; at the same time people are arguing over whether or not there is enough money for treating actual ailments.
The beginning and end of life are especially sensitive phases for the experimental use of the possibilities of medical science. For instance, foetal ultrasound studies were conducted for about 30 years in Finland the ethical side was considered.
At that time technology developed to such a degree that tax money started being used for recording foetal videos, in the name of studying the structure of foetuses.
The longer life-expectancy in Finland is largely the result of improved standards of living and education. However, medicine certainly also has something to do with it.
When the national pension law was passed in 1956, life expectancy for Finnish men was about 64 years, and that of women was about 70. Now men have a life expectancy of 75.5 years, and for women it is more than 82.
Finns now are able to enjoy their years of retirement - as long as they are in good enough shape.
In the final stages of life, some old people undergo pharmaceutical and equipment-based medicalisation. They are given as much as 15 to 20 different kinds of medicines to keep them alive in the bed of an institution. Large amounts of medical technology are used to keep them alive. Whether or not they have a life of human dignity is another matter.
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 17.1.2007
MARJUT LINDBERG / Helsingin Sanomat
marjut.lindberg@hs.fi
