Biopolytics and Bioeconomics in health: the paradigm of risk in informed consent and defensive medicine

Abstract

At the beginning, it was the French philosopher Michel Foucault who explicitly defined medicine as a matter of biopolitics, making evident the role that, in his opinion, medical knowledge assumed in certain strategies of pow-er. Starting from this assumption, the bioeconomic paradigm has been embodied in a form of governmentality of human behaviors, where the individuals are first and foremost considered biological living units. The biopolitical and bio-economic paradigm must not be considered as a space of absence of power, but a place where power leads to obedience by activating alternative devices, acting on population wishes and needs. These dynamics have slowly modified and even subverted the relationship between doctor and patient, determining the default of the paternalistic relationship and the strengthening of defensive medicine.