mylatulipp wrote:

> Coined words by legislators, insurers, etc. as part of an ideology
> have a function, i.e. to confuse in order to get a better control.

I don't believe they *intend* to confuse, quite the contrary. They're
trying to clarify in order to control the quality and accessibility of
health care. Not everybody can understand that the more you try to
control, the more you miss your goal.

> So let us go back to the study of the definition of illness.

Definitions have value only when we all agree on them. I have never
heard an argument about the meaning of, say, the word "tree" (maybe
botanists argue about it). "Illness" is today a meaningless word because
everybody has his own private definition of it. Like dividing by zero --
the answer could be anything and therefore it is meaningless.

> Like a malfunction of the ear, eye or liver, those disorders are
> malfunctions.

We can't know that. Say a person insists that the CIA is after him.
Maybe he's saying that to attract attention. Maybe a neurotoxic
substance is affecting his judgment. Maybe the CIA really is after him.
We can't know.

> The blood pressure must be neither too high, hypertension, nor too
> low, hypotension.

Good example. Why do we all have to have the same blood pressure? What
gives physicians the right to determine what my blood pressure should
be, and if it isn't, pressure me, upon the threat of death, to take
pills that will make it (appear to) be what they dictate?

> The
> mean in these cases, is the norm, the natural norm i.e. what most
> people have.

But that's the point: we tend to assume that what most people have is
normal and good, whereas what the minority has is wrong and must be
changed. Take, for instance, the matter of gender. Most people are
either male or female, but a small minority are in between. In the past,
the birth of an in between child was reason for surgeons to sharpen
their carving knives. They no doubt believed they were doing the child a
favor, but today these people call themselves intersex, and say "Leave
our bodies alone and let us be who we are. Don't try to make us conform
to one gender or the other."

Whether it's called health/illness or (mal)function or (mis)behavior,
the point is that people should be left unmolested unless they ask for
help in which case they should be provided only the help they request,
or told honestly that such help doesn't exist. Only if they molest
someone else is interference justified, and then only after a proper
trial by peers, not physicians.

Mira