From preventivist dilemma to promotionist dilemma: resuming the contribution of Sérgio Arouca

Abstract

The aim of this study is to resume the category "preventive dilemma", coined by Sérgio Arouca, in his Doctoral Thesis, written in 1975, to reflect on its update. In his Thesis, Arouca sought to understand how the rules of discursive formation of Preventive Medicine were produced, such as relations with nondiscursive instances, studying the joints with the capitalist mode of production. The analysis of these joints enabled Arouca to evidence that the Preventive Medicine did not escape the fundamental contradiction of Medicine that transforms health, a use-value, into exchange value, through medical care. So the research that We do, rescuing that category, is directed to a specific question: how it happened the update of the discourse of Preventive Medicine for Health Promotion?  The category coined by Arouca has highlighted that Health Promotion does not escape the fundamental contradiction of medicine, and, as opposed to being an innovation to the field of health, Health Promotion is an update of preventative speech, setting thus the promotionist dilemma.