The God in the Machine

Megan Stanfield

September 6, 2011

Rhetorical Summary: The God in the Machine

Lapham, an American writer rhetorical art since the early 1970s, dominantly proclaims his census for the American value of medicine as a product of “morbid emission” (13). In the article The God in the Machine, Lapham critics the fantasy of medicine, defining it as “a science of uncertainty and an art of probability” (15).

It is evident that Lapham is disgraced by America’s current “dysfunctional” health care system, describing it as “an unburied corpse, which, if left lying around in the sun by the 111th Congress, threatens to foul the sweet summer air of the American dream” (13). In the hope to advocate for improvement upon the present healthcare system, which according to Lapham, is currently being discussed as “the health of American money, not the well-being of its people” (13), consistently uses medical terminology to describe the current living conditions. Historically the American dream was composed of following your passion and living a just, free life. In contrast, Lapham argues that the current American dream is to acquire the “constitutional right to life everlasting,” therefore treating death [or life] as a “preventable disease” (16).

Speaking to any Americans with a heart beat and a pulse, Lapham provokes his readers to become social changers, to understand the problem. The problem that medicine no longer is thought of as a public right or civic duty, rather it is glamoured as “profit bearing merchandise”, an “enterprise” leading America to a “medical industrial complex”. With advances of technology paving the way towards the manifest of “governing nature” (15), why wouldn’t the “American faithful expect the coming of miracles” (16)?

Today people have access to prescription drugs, MRIs, EKGs, and x-rays, yet the “eighth leading cause of deaths is caused by iatrogenic infections, also known as a mistaken diagnosis, raking higher than breast cancer” or vehicle accidents. Continuously, America has proven to lead the world in “the advancement of medical science,” yet according to Lapham out of the “1.5 million Americans are expected to file for bankruptcy,” 900,000 of which will be filing in part to medical bills. Lapham crunches more numbers, calculating that in 2007 the American populous paid over 3,000 dollars per capita more than countries that are medically financed by their government under universal health care. Coincidentally, Lapham highlights that although America leads the world in technological, scientific, and medical advances, countries such as Havana and Minsk have a higher infant survival rate than a newborn in New York.

In Summary, Lapham questions the American dream, analyzing it to be faulty in its civic duty to protect its populous, from the infection of greed of money over its meaningful quality of life. Lapham urges his readers to look at all of the data and question the status quo.

Lapham, Lewis H. “The God in the Machine” Lapham’s Quarterly 2.4 (2009): 13-19. Print.