The Biomedicalization of Addiction: A Look at the Clinic
Monday 30 January, 2012
5pm, $0
New York University, Silver Center
100 Washington Square East, Irving H. Jurow Lecture Hall Room 101A
Helena Hansen, Assistant Professor of Anthropology and Psychiatry.
Addiction treatment advocates have been calling for recognition and treatment of addiction as a biological illness. And they have been successful in introducing addiction pharmaceuticals into primary care clinics, which in some cases has required changes in Federal law. This talk presents a long term, multi-method study of the cultural shift toward the use of addiction pharmaceuticals in primary care, in particular the introduction of opioid maintenance drugs into general clinics. It highlights the political and economic forces acting on clinical practice, and the imagery of race and class underlying them.
Addiction treatment advocates have been calling for recognition and treatment of addiction as a biological illness. And they have been successful in introducing addiction pharmaceuticals into primary care clinics, which in some cases has required changes in Federal law. This talk presents a long term, multi-method study of the cultural shift toward the use of addiction pharmaceuticals in primary care, in particular the introduction of opioid maintenance drugs into general clinics. It highlights the political and economic forces acting on clinical practice, and the imagery of race and class underlying them.