Symposium celebrating the 50th anniversiry of Medical Nemesis

To mark the 50th anniversary of Ivan Illich's seminal work Medical Nemesis, the Centre for Medical Humanities together with SFAM Uppsala arranged a symposium engaging in various aspects of Illich's criticism of modern medicine. Illich's book, first published in 1974, strongly criticized the modern health care system and pointed out that it could pose a risk to human health. Despite the fact that individual actors today raise questions critical of modern medicine, there is a lack of a broader debate about the social effects of healthcare.

The symposium attracted over 200 people – including healthcare professionals, researchers, students and the public – and took place at Akademiska sjukhuset and the University main building in Uppsala.

The afternoon's lectures in Grönwallsalen began with a background on Ivan Illich and his thoughts. Anna Sjöberg presented Illich's life and philosophical orientation, as well as how his Catholic faith influenced his view of healthcare. Louise Olsson and Rolf Ahlzén then gave a broad overview of critical perspectives on modern medicine and how they have influenced the development of healthcare.

Shai Mulinari continued with a lecture on "Digital biomarkers and borderless data collection", where he problematized how personal data can be exploited as a digital raw material in healthcare. He questioned what is truly "biological" in the digital biomarkers now used in digital phenotyping. Karl Gauffin reflected on the concept of risk and which risks we should take seriously - and which we might be better off ignoring. Roland Paulsen took his book Think about: a study in anxiety as a starting point to discuss how culture affects people's experience of anxiety and obsessive-compulsive disorder. Henrik Vogt ended the afternoon's program with a warning for a future where preventive precision medicine risks subjecting all parts of our lives to the logic of medicine.

The evening program in the University main building began with Liv Strömquist, who spoke about her new comic book "Pythian pratar". She reflected on how the need for control is an important driving force in modernity and how the individualization of experiences such as loss, pain and disappointment makes it more difficult to deal with these feelings. Roland Paulsen returned to the evening program and spoke about "The therapeutic culture" - and and started from the paradoxical fact that the number of people diagnosed with psychiatric diagnoses is increasing despite the availability of therapy, without us finding more than theories as to why.

The symposium was arranged on the initiative of Johan Bengtsson, postdoctoral fellow in medical sciences and resident physician in psychiatry and David Gyll general practitioner at Bälinge vårdcentral, who organized it together with Camilla Lyckblad doctoral student at ALM and part of the graduate school in medical humanities, and Erika Sigvardsdotter, coordinator at CMH. The symposium provided a deep dive into perspectives critical of modern medicine, and enabled a discussion about the future of healthcare and its challenges. CMH hopes that the event will inspire a continued and in-depth debate about critical perspectives on medicine.