Médecine prédictive et santé parfaite : d'une visée salutaire à une visée eugénique…

Societal changes have revolutionized modern life. In the 20th century the alliance between the political and the religious was progressively replaced by a new alliance between the political and the therapeutic in a common battle against the malicious. This shift in orientation has had a considerable impact on the society's regulatory systems and social relationships. Activities of everyday life, as well as modern medical techniques such as the practices of preventive medicine, are revealing illustrations. Evolving within an individualistic model, which has replaced the model of circular flow where exchange predominated, modern man has become accustomed to linear flow. The search for satisfaction of solitary desires has evicted concerns about those beyond, creating the conditions for a new orientation of human anxiety away from the hereafter and centered on the protection of one's own body. Application of a project of perfect heath reactivates the debate on eugenism, disqualified in favor of the medicoscientific term of orthogenism.