General practitioners and the pull of prevention

Sociologists have often criticised notions of preventive health work advocated by doctors. This work has yielded important insights into victim-blaming and into ways the economic and political causes of ill-health have been mystified or denied. While this analytical strategy remains an important one, it needs extending in at least three directions. First, we must appreciate changes over time in the forms of arguments about preventive work; secondly, we must situate the argument both in terms of developments within the medical profession and in terms of the relationship of the medical profession to the wider society; finally, we need to make sense of the doctors' claims that these ideas are radical/progressive. The paper is based on a recent series of reports on prevention by the Royal College of General Practitioners, and focusses in particular on the one dealing with preventive care for children.