2009-The Physician of the Future English and Catalan

F UNDACIÓN E DUCACIÓN M ÉDICA (FEM) 36 1.4. !e beliefs Today, much like yesterday, utopian ideals propose the achieving of complete health for everybody for equal happiness (R. Dubos). $is utopian approaches uses disease preventionmeasures, health prevention actions, health education programmes and population screenings as its main tools. Most are reasonably geared towards understandable and commendable objectives, but some are not as easily justi"able as they are based on an absurd belief that illness and death are avoidable and occur only as a consequence of a failure to apply adequate health preventative measures and not as a natural part of the biological essence of human nature. Such utopian ideals, obsessed with the cult to health appear characteristic of our times in bringing about a state of mind that has been called by some “ compulsory health” ; an attitude that aims at obligatory attainment of perfect health for the population through the imposition of healthy behaviour on everyone. $ose totalitarian conceptions are hardly compatible with medical ethics.