Alzheimer's Disease
Abstract
Diagnoses are more than pathophysiological facts. They are simultaneously the product of social negotiation and a social structure that will shape future engagement with health, illness, and normality. That is to say, even in the presence of a material physical dysfunction, extensive social interaction must occur before the condition is granted disease status, and, once such status is granted, other potential frames are discarded and the condition is naturalized. For a diagnosis to exist, the condition has first to be recognized as dysfunctional, there needs to be technology available to allow its identification, and the field needs to agree upon the diagnostic parameters, usually as a result of debate and consensus (Aronowitz, 2001). Then, the diagnosis is institutionalized by inclusion in disease classification systems, and henceforth earns its place in the public and medical consciousness. Furthermore, the diagnosis then reproduces its boundaries. The discussions and debates leading up to its creation are subsumed in the diagnosis which becomes reified as fact of nature, rather than as the product of technology, negotiation and politics.