Question

How and why has medicine usurped legal and religious institutions when it comes to defining norms/deviance?

Answer 1

Answer:

Explanation:

Get in touch with your local Jehovah's Witness branch. They can give you an earful on this subject.

They have religious reasons for objecting to transfusions. When it comes to children, the courts have overruled them saying that the welfare of the child is more important than any medical objection or argument that the witnesses may have.

People with Leukemia at some point in course of their disease, may need a transfusion. Nothing else will do. The cells in blood fight foreign antibodies and transport oxygen to organs that need it. If a patient's own blood can't do it, then a transfusion becomes necessary.

The courts have a right to dictate terms when children are involved. The courts do not have the same right with adults. If an adult chooses to end the suffering,  they have that right. There even comes a point (in Canada at least) where death is an option. But an individual patient must give knowledgeable consent to taking his own life.

So medicine has a say in some things and not in others. In the United States, the population has not given up on the rights of the 1st amendment. And medicine can override even those rights.