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"Critical medical anthropology focuses on how economics and politics shape the overall status of human health. Critical medical anthropology addresses the disparities in the quality of health and care in the presence of social inequalities. Social divisions based on race, ethnicity, gender and class can influence access to health care and susceptibility to disease. Critical medical anthropologists acknowledge these social factors when looking at the prevalence of a particular disease and ways to prevent it" (Wikibooks 2013).
Critical medical anthropology is based on the two theories, the medical ecological theory and cultural interpretive theory. The medical ecological theory is based on the concept of adaptation. Adaptation defined as behavioral or biological changes at the individual or group level that support survival in a certain environment. From this theory, health is perceived as a measure of environmental adaptation. The point being that medical ecological orientation is that a social group's health reflects the nature and quality of the relationships within a group, surrounding groups, and with the plants and animals of that habitat. An example of this theory is the effect of malaria on the Mano people of Liberia. The presence of malaria can change gene frequencies, affect immunological patterns, produce susceptibility to other pathologies, and lower efficiency of affected individuals. To counteract and survive the Mano people have to adapt both behaviorally and biologically. Behaviorally, the Mano people would initiate their cultural healing norms whichever may be pertinent to their people. Biologically, an adaptation to malaria is a mutation in the gene that controls the production of hemoglobin in the blood. This mutation distorts red blood cells into clusters of needle-like crystals shaped as crescents. This change prevents the production of the malaria parasite (Baers, Singer, Susser 2003:32-33).
The cultural interpretive theory is a direct reaction to the dominance of the ecological view on health issues. Disease belongs to culture, particularly to the specialized culture of medicine. Culture is not only a means of representing disease but is essential to its context as a human reality. Cultural perspective disease is known to sufferers and healers through interpretive activities. These activities include a combination of biology, social practices, and culturally constituted frames that result in clinical realities. For example, cultural practice being the association of Western culture and obesity due to lack of self control. Clinical reality being a diagnosis of a medical disease such as AIDS or the flu (Baers, Singer, Susser 2003:36).
Critical medical anthropology is based on the two theories, the medical ecological theory and cultural interpretive theory. The medical ecological theory is based on the concept of adaptation. Adaptation defined as behavioral or biological changes at the individual or group level that support survival in a certain environment. From this theory, health is perceived as a measure of environmental adaptation. The point being that medical ecological orientation is that a social group's health reflects the nature and quality of the relationships within a group, surrounding groups, and with the plants and animals of that habitat. An example of this theory is the effect of malaria on the Mano people of Liberia. The presence of malaria can change gene frequencies, affect immunological patterns, produce susceptibility to other pathologies, and lower efficiency of affected individuals. To counteract and survive the Mano people have to adapt both behaviorally and biologically. Behaviorally, the Mano people would initiate their cultural healing norms whichever may be pertinent to their people. Biologically, an adaptation to malaria is a mutation in the gene that controls the production of hemoglobin in the blood. This mutation distorts red blood cells into clusters of needle-like crystals shaped as crescents. This change prevents the production of the malaria parasite (Baers, Singer, Susser 2003:32-33).
The cultural interpretive theory is a direct reaction to the dominance of the ecological view on health issues. Disease belongs to culture, particularly to the specialized culture of medicine. Culture is not only a means of representing disease but is essential to its context as a human reality. Cultural perspective disease is known to sufferers and healers through interpretive activities. These activities include a combination of biology, social practices, and culturally constituted frames that result in clinical realities. For example, cultural practice being the association of Western culture and obesity due to lack of self control. Clinical reality being a diagnosis of a medical disease such as AIDS or the flu (Baers, Singer, Susser 2003:36).