Problem
Medical treatment for non-medical conditions
Other Names:
Administering of medical drugs for non-medical purposes Nature:
With few exceptions, once a drug or device is licensed for medical use, decisions about its use in individual cases are left to the doctor and patient, and to the marketplace. As medicine and biotechnology gain the ability to manipulate physical, and possibly mental, traits that are not obviously linked to disease, there are increasingly fuzzy borders between what constitutes a "disease" and a "successful" treatment. Incidence:
A ten-year experimental programme is currently authorized in the USA aimed at testing whether human growth hormone (HGH) can increase the final height of otherwise healthy children using human growth hormone (HGH) who have adequate levels of HGH in their bloodstreams but nevertheless are very short. Most studies involving short children with adequate HGH have lasted less than two years, with many suggesting that hormone supplements simply shorten the time it takes to reach adult height. Broader Problems:
Unnecessary health system referrals Narrower Problems:
Abuse of performance enhancing drugsAbuse of sedation for behaviour modificationDeliberate unbalancing of sex ratio of births Related Problems:
Excessive medical intervention in childbirth Aggravates:
Abuse of prescription drugsGenetic discriminationExcessive use of resources on expensive medical techniquesUnnecessary medical procedures Strategies:
Overcoming drug habitPrescribing medicationUsing medical drugs for non-medical purposesTaking medical drugs Subject(s):
Medicine → Medicine Health Care → Treatment
Health Care → Pharmacy
Management → Administration
Related UN Sustainable Development Goals:
Problem Type:
F: Fuzzy exceptional problems Date of last update
04.10.2020 – 22:48 CEST