Medical Sociology

The poor have the highest rates of disease and disability of any socioeconomic group, demonstrating their greater biological disposition toward illness.

False

Crude death and birth rates are too gross a measure to be meaningful for most sociological purposes

True

Medical sociology focuses on the social causes and consequences of health and illness.

True

The simplest ratio computed by the epidemiologist is called the crude rate.

True

The bubonic plague was ended in 1750 with the development of penicillin

False

The tremendous growth of medical sociology would have been possible even without financial support for applied studies provided by the government.

False

Medical sociology is important because it focuses on the critical role social factors play in determining or influencing the health of individuals, groups, and the larger society

True

The sociologist in medicine collaborates directly with the physician and other health personnel in studying the social factors that are relevant to a particular health problem. However, the sociology of medicine deals with such factors as the organization, role relationships, norms, values, and beliefs of medical practice as a form of human behavior.

True

The development of institutional review boards and the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act have eliminated ethical concerns about issues such as clinical care, informed consent, and drug testing.

False

The living conditions of early nomadic humans, with close proximity to others and exploration of new environments, were favorable to widespread and frequent epidemics.

False

Working within an atheoretical, applied approach, Parsons was the first to demonstrate how medicine functions to exert social control within the larger social system.

False

Unlike law, religion, politics, economics, and other social institutions, medicine was ignored by sociology's founders in the late nineteenth century because it did not appear to shape the structure and nature of society.

True