Abstract
The purpose of this research is to clarify the occurrence mechanism of social problems in medicine through a unique analysis of process of formalization created by the author. Despite recent multi-layered drug safety measures, a social problem in medicine, sometimes referred to as “Drug Disaster” still occur. In this report, three major social problems in medicine were analyzed, such as thalidomide birth defect crisis, Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV)-tainted blood scandal (Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (AIDS) scandal), and the cervical cancer vaccine case, focusing on each patient’s claiming activities. Through the analysis I found the essence of problem could be categorized into two types: one was called “traditional drug disaster: drug-induced case” and the other was “modern drug disaster: the drug causality is unknown, but attributed to the drug”. It was suggested that different action would be required to prevent the social problem in medicine for each category.
