Health as a social system: from the risk of ineffectiveness to the excessive judicialization in medicine

Abstract

Society differentiates itself through evolution processes and internal communications between its systems. Health as a social system is a relevant issue for the construction of a worthier society. In fact, decisions deal with actual intrinsic risk especially with regard to the ineffectiveness of the protection of fundamental human rights and the excess in judicialization in drug distribution. Through the hypothetical, deductive and bibliographical research, current paper contextualizes and analyzes the right to health in contemporary society. Systemic approach is employed which ruptures the traditional presuppositions of social sciences and based on the arguments of Niklas Luhmann´s system theory. The problem lies in the gap within the organizational inadequacy of the application of law to health in the wake of current needs. Health may be analyzed as a social system coupled to an acknowledgement of its complexity and relationship with the juridical system. Health, or rather, the existing links between access to justice for obtaining drugs and the effectiveness of protection of this right in defending the dignity of the human person, is a systemic process that presents a social and juridical dimension which goes beyond cure and the prevention of diseases. In fact, it provides adequate life quality for people that require adaptation to the hyper-complex stance of contemporary society.