Beauty medicalization: bioethics reflection on medical responsibility

Abstract

The popularization of medicine has motivated some doctors to think about the human body as an unfinished work that must be often improved. Some professionals, subject to the analysis of the bioethics responsibility, also supported by scientific truths for the establishment of an aesthetic normality, become responsible for the aesthetic pathological variables, for social rules that value good physical appearance, as well as for selfesteem and actions of the ones oppressed by such standards. This study aimed to know what the beauty medicalization represents to doctors and to think about their responsibility on the topic. It is about a descriptive-qualitative study, with the sample of 10 physicians working in a Medium-Sized Regional Hospital at the city of Pouso Alegre (MG). The Collective Subject Discourse was used for the analysis. The results reinforce that beauty medicalization is seen as purely aesthetic medicine and that the medical responsibility restates medical ethics as the conductor of the doctor-patient relationship regarding the issue.