Limits to Medicine Quotes

“The more time, toil, and sacrifice spent by a population in producing medicine as a commodity, the larger will be the by-product, namely, the fallacy that society has a supply of health locked away which can be mined and marketed.”
― Ivan Illich, Limits to Medicine: Medical Nemesis: The Expropriation of Health

“ما يخبرنا به الطب عن التعافي والمعاناة والموت يعادل ما يخبرنا به التحليل الكيميائي عن القيمة الجمالية للفخَّار.”
― Ivan Illich, Limits to Medicine: Medical Nemesis: The Expropriation of Health

“Man's consciously lived fragility, individuality and relatedness make the experience of pain, of sickness and of death an integral part of his life. The ability to cope with this trio autonomously is fundamental to his health. As he becomes dependent on the management of his intimacy, he renounces his autonomy and his health must decline.”
― Ivan Illich, Limits to Medicine: Medical Nemesis: The Expropriation of Health

“Money may always threaten health. Too much money corrupts it.”
― Ivan Illich, Limits to Medicine: Medical Nemesis: The Expropriation of Health

“The proposal that doctors not be licensed by an in-group does not mean that their services shall not be evaluated, but rather that this evaluation can be done more effectively by informed clients than by their own peers.”
― Ivan Illich, Limits to Medicine: Medical Nemesis: The Expropriation of Health

“A vast amount of contemporary clinical care is incidental to the curing of disease, but the damage done by medicine to the health of individuals and populations is very significant.”
― Ivan Illich, Limits to Medicine: Medical Nemesis: The Expropriation of Health

“Through intravenous feeding, blood transfusions, and surgical techniques, more of those who get to the hospital survive trauma, but survival rates for the most common types of cancer—those which make up 90 percent of the cases—have remained virtually unchanged over the last twenty-five years.”
― Ivan Illich, Limits to Medicine: Medical Nemesis: The Expropriation of Health

“during the last century doctors have affected epidemics no more profoundly than did priests during earlier times. Epidemics came and went, imprecated by both but touched by neither. They are not modified any more decisively by the rituals performed in medical clinics than by those customary at religious shrines”
― Ivan Illich, Limits to Medicine: Medical Nemesis: The Expropriation of Health