Progress: Local Politics or Global Politics?

In Andrew Lakoff’s book there are several contradicting references to politics and progress. As pharmaceutical companies continue to create a market in which they can be profitable, in Argentina they face the obstacle of either standardizing the industry by convincing psychoanalyst that their drugs will allow for better analysis or by cutting them out completely. There is no doubt that progress is being made; however the results are quite unclear. Yes, more radical doctors like Pablo are realizing that there is a large population that has been diagnosed as schizophrenic when they may actually be bi-polar, but for the most part they continue to have problems diagnosing mental illnesses. Because of this, I believe that a process such as genome mapping may cause a major breakthrough.

Even with being able to detect genetic markers, doctors will continue to debate the proper treatment. This is why I believe pharmaceutical companies or the government health institution should put more of an emphasis on a scientific method of diagnosing the illnesses rather than curing them. A scientific method must be in place to allow doctors to universally diagnose the illness even if they each treat it differently. If this is done by pharmaceutical companies they will play a major role in how mental health institutions are run. This is why I feel that it would be best for their representative democratic republic to elect officials they feel can take on the task of creating institutions which can directly serve the Argentinean public rather than the global interests of pharmaceutical conglomerates.