Iatrogenesis

Iatrogenesis—from the Greek iatros (physician) and genesis (origin)—names harm generated by the intervention designed to heal. Illich expanded the clinical concept into a three-level analysis in Medical Nemesis (1975). Clinical iatrogenesis is the direct harm of medical intervention: hospital-acquired infections, adverse drug reactions, surgical complications, misdiagnosis. Social iatrogenesis is the dependency created when populations can no longer imagine being healthy without medical supervision, when health itself is redefined as medically administered. Cultural iatrogenesis, the deepest level, is the loss of the human capacity to cope with pain, impairment, and death—capacities that medical intervention progressively replaces with professional management, until the population can no longer suffer, age, or die without institutional mediation. Each level generates more of itself.