Emergence of patient organizations for medical cannabis in Chile: boundary-work of field, monopoly of enunciation and epistemic injustice

Abstract

The formation of patient associations that use medical cannabis and its political articulation in the second decade of the 21st Century generated a controversy over the therapeutic properties of this plant that has as its counterpart the Chilean medical establishment. This article describe the emergence of patient organizations and their families grouped around cannabis-based therapeutics and analyze the response of the medical associations. I will revise the concern of the health agents to delimit the scientific field (boundary-work) on the object-cannabis from studies of Evidence-Based Medicine and, through this methodology, settle in as authorities in the field, monopolizing the discussion. I regard that this understanding of therapeutic relationships, in which the experience of patients is minimized, is a form of epistemic injustice. I further suggest that beyond the dispute over the therapeutic qualities of a medications, the controversy surrounding medical cannabis implies background tensions regarding doctor-patient relationships and medical epistemes.