Commentary on 'the medicalization of life' and 'society's expectations of health'.

Both Illich and Leach raise important issues of the uses and abuses of medical manpower and knowledge. Predictably enough, Illich appears the more disturbing and radical, but Leach, in his more urbane manner, confronts us with problems no less fearsome. I am stimulated by their arguments, agree with a good deal of their different diagnoses, but am not totally persuaded. Leach's argument suffers perhaps from the limitatons of length imposed by its form as a conference paper. Statements which challenge the listener sometimes come out as unsubstantiated assertions in cold print. I am not, for example, entirely with him when he says that 'feelings and attitudes regarding sickness and health are everywhere closely related to feelings and attitudes rgarding sex'. 'Everywhere'? How 'closly related'? 'Closely related' by members of society or by anthropologists?