Description

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The modern penchant for transforming human problems into "diseases" and judicial sanctions into "treatments," replacing the rule of law with the rule of medical discretion, leads to a type of government social critic Thomas Szasz calls "pharmacracy." He warns that the creeping substitution of democracy for pharmacracyprivate personal concerns increasingly perceived as requiring a medical-political responseinexorably erodes personal freedom and dignity.

About the Author

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Thomas Szasz is professor emeritus of psychiatry at State University of New York Upstate Medical University in Syracuse. His books include The Manufacture of Madness: A Comparative Study of the Inquisition and the Mental Health Movement; The Meaning of Mind: Language, Morality, and Neuroscience; and Fatal Freedom: The Ethics and Politics of Suicide, all published by Syracuse University Press.