ABSTRACT
The relationship between disease and work is generally considered to be part of the professional realm of occupational medicine. Occupational medicine in the Federal Republic of Germany has concentrated almost exclusively on the physical, chemical, and biological threats to health and has largely ignored the psychosocial impact of the structure and organization of work under capitalism. There are 55 officially registered occupational diseases caused by physical, chemical, or biological agents, or the effects of cumulative trauma. The dominant conception of working people held by traditional occupational medicine abstracts them from family, management, society, and their own history, as if work itself could be reduced to its physical-mechanical dimensions. Occupational medicine and industrial sociology in the Federal Republic of Germany tend to abstract people from their social context. The main focus of occupational medicine is the officially recognized occupational diseases. Occupational medicine in the Federal Republic holds that there are two basic causes of work accidents: technical defects and human error.
