Disease Classification And Medicalization Case Study

There are many questions that follow a disease or illness episode. The person suffering from the disease may ask these questions, or their family and friends may ask them. Doctors and other health care professionals may also ask questions about the disease in order to work out the best course of treatment. Theses questions may cross from the biomedical side of the disease to the social side and must include a variety of factors before the disease can be properly understood and treated.

In module 1, my questions about disease classification and medicalization were answered. Disease is defined as a definite pathological process that has a distinct set of symptoms and signs (Miller-Keane & O'Toole, 2007). Thus, my disease was the RPBV. Illness
Rapivab is a neuraminidase inhibitor. Without neuraminidase, only one round of viral replication would be possible resulting in a very low viral load, too low to be disease causing (Moscona, 2005). Rapivab stops the entry of the virus into epithelial cells where the virus usually destroys the hemagglutinin receptor on the host cell; progeny viruses can thus not be released and are unable to infect other cells, stopping the viral spread (Katzen & Ison, 2015). A placebo test was done in 1997 where 262 patients were confirmed with a RPBV, half were given the Rapivab and half were given the placebo. Of the half given the Rapivab, 76% recovered in a time period one or two days sooner than those with the placebo, discounting the individual who suffered from disease complication (Hayden, et al., 1997). The drug did not cause serious adverse reactions but did cause insomnia, constipation, diarrhoea, and high blood pressure (Cunha,
The first placebo trials began being entertained in the late 1940s (Miller, Colloca, Hull, Tilburt, Kaptchuk, & Avins, 2011). The main concern of the placebo effect was the deception associated with the trials as well as the lack of understanding of the term “placebo” (Miller, Colloca, Hull, Tilburt, Kaptchuk, & Avins, 2011). The problem to address was the deception and thus the “authorized deception” concept was created whereby patients participating in the trial were told that some of them would be receiving a placebo without knowledge (Miller, Colloca, Hull, Tilburt, Kaptchuk, & Avins, 2011). Many forms had to be signed in consent to participate as well as to acknowledge that all the terms, such as “placebo”, were properly understood in order to ensure no legal issues (Miller, Colloca, Hull, Tilburt, Kaptchuk, & Avins,