El. knyga: Physicians of the Future: Doctor-Influencers, Patient-Consumers, and the Business of Functional Medicine

"This book emerged out of the same research period that informed the author's previous book, Nested Ecologies. Where Nested Ecologies focuses on the systems biology that shapes functional medicine (FM) and provides a useful model for critiquing its claims, this book is more about the actual doctors, patients, and business models. For instance, many FM doctors come to the field through their own battles with chronic disease, and that journey gives them credibility with their patients. At the same time, FMprioritizes patients' own observations and embodied knowledge, making them "doctors," too. Because FM can be prohibitively expensive, online support groups composed of patients have sprung up and some sufferers of chronic disease turn to these online support groups in lieu of practicing FM doctors whose fees they cannot afford. As a result, many FM doctors become "bioentrepreneurs," leveraging social media to grow their practice and become "doctor-influencers." FM may include folk remedies or traditionalhealing practices rooted in marginalized communities, romanticizing and profiting from these communities without any real connection to them. Physicians of the Future interrogates the system, acknowledging the benefits of "mainstreaming" group-delivered care while arguing that FM practices still replicate neoliberal ideologies, prioritizing the individual and reinscribing inequities based on race and class"--

The first scholarly exploration of the forums, practice, and economics of functional medicine.

Physicians of the Future interrogates the hidden logics of inclusion and exclusion in functional medicine (FM), a holistic form of personalized medicine that targets chronic disease. Rosalynn Vega uncovers how, as “wounded healers,” some FM practitioners who are former chronic disease sufferers turn their illness narratives into a form of social capital, leveraging social media to relate to patients and build practices as “doctor-influencers.” Arguing that power and authority operate distinctly in FM when compared to conventional medicine, largely because FM services are paid for out of pocket by socioeconomically privileged “clients,” Vega studies how FM practitioners engage in entrepreneurship of their own while critiquing the profit motives of the existing healthcare system, pharmaceutical industry, and insurance industry. Using data culled from online support groups, conferences, docuseries, blogs, podcasts, YouTube, and TED Talks, as well as her own battles with chronic illness, Vega argues that FM practices prioritize the individual while inadvertently reinscribing inequities based on race and class. Ultimately, she opens avenues of possibility for FM interlocutors wrestling with their responsibility for making functional medicine accessible to all.