Carl Elliott, MD, PhD - Bio Link:
Carl Elliott, MD, PhD - AHC - Bioethics, University of Minnesota
ABOUT THIS BOOK
Over the last twenty-five years, medicine and consumerism have been on an unchecked collision course, but, until now, the fallout from their impact has yet to be fully uncovered. A writer for The New Yorker and The Atlantic Monthly, Carl Elliott ventures into the uncharted dark side of medicine, shining a light on the series of social and legislative changes that have sacrificed old-style doctoring to the values of consumer capitalism. Along the way, he introduces us to the often shifty characters who work the production line in Big Pharma: from the professional guinea pigs who test-pilot new drugs and the ghostwriters who pen “scientific” articles for drug manufacturers to the PR specialists who manufacture “news” bulletins. We meet the drug reps who will do practically anything to make quota in an ever-expanding arms race of pharmaceutical gift-giving; the “thought leaders” who travel the world to enlighten the medical community about the wonders of the latest release; even, finally, the ethicists who oversee all that commercialized medicine has to offer from their pharma-funded perches.
Taking the pulse of the medical community today, Elliott discovers the culture of deception that has become so institutionalized many people do not even see it as a problem. Head-turning stories and a rogue’s gallery of colorful characters become his springboard for exploring larger ethical issues surrounding money. Are there certain things that should not be bought and sold? In what ways do the ethics of business clash with the ethics of medical care? And what is wrong with medical consumerism anyway? Elliott asks all these questions and more as he examines the underbelly of medicine.
What others are saying:
“If you think your doctors prescribe medications for you on the basis of their unbiased judgment and objective medical research, this book will disabuse you of that old-fashioned fantasy. In his superb exposé, Carl Elliott shows how the big drug companies have bribed and corrupted the medical establishment so that we no longer know which drugs are effective or why our doctors prescribe them.”—Marcia Angell, author of The Truth About the Drug Companies: How They Deceive Us and What to Do About It
“Beneath the white coats and sterile labs of the great American heath care system, Carl Elliott finds a drug-addled, gang-run, con game—sometimes bizarre, often hilarious. The noble arc that runs from Hippocrates to Sherwin Nuland washes out in a ‘business model’ apparently inspired by Timothy Leary, John Gotti, and that infomercial pitch guy for ShamWow.”
—Jack Hitt, contributing editor for This American Life and author of Off the Road
"Enjoyable to read and laced with sardonic wit, this is an eye-opening work that all consumers of health care should read."
—Library Journal
“Carl Elliott has written a deep, daring, and sometimes very funny book about aspects of medicine you’ve never seen, and probably never will unless you take the time to crack this cover. You’ll discover what it means when healers forget—or maybe never grasped—their main mission and pollute not only medicine but all those within its circle. Elliott’s book describes the conundrum of modern medical practice wittily, incisively, and beautifully. This book should be required reading for anyone who has ever been a patient—in other words, for everyone.”
—Lauren Slater, author of Opening Skinner's Box and Prozac Diary
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4 comments:
Here's one of the book reviewers
The Truth About Drug Companies
Sept 2004 Interview: Dr. Marcia Angell in Mother Jones
http://motherjones.com/politics/2004/09/truth-about-drug-companies
"Angell attacks major pharmaceutical industry -- whose top ten companies make more in profits than the rest of the Fortune 500 combined -- for using “free market” rhetoric while opposing competition at all costs. She discusses Prilosec maker Astra-Zeneca, which filed multiple lawsuits against generic drug makers to prevent them from entering the market when the company’s exclusive marketing rights expired."
Just like AZ sued TEVA to prevent generic SEROQUEL and extend the patent thru 2012.
I find it to be a public service people like Elliott do when they speak about the internal workings and corruption of the pharma industry.
With this much knowledge, their is no way people can remain ignorant of facts and turn a blind eye to the immoral and unethical pharma and science industry that runs corporate America-- in fact the industry has the government bought and paid for, all the while tax payers become innocent victims, by trusting the government, based on blind faith that because health is the topic we are safe and watched over. Not the case.
This book and the Robert Whitaker book, Anatomy of an Epidemic should become the new dynamic duo on the shelves of American consumers, and doctors should ditch the DSM for these 2 books. If that happened, we might see a shift in the medication based paradigm that has been fueled by unethical research and marketing schemes from the pharmaceutical industry.
Every citizen in America is affected by this health corporate crime, and it's time for this madness to STOP.
It is time for people to stop allowing pharma companies to profit over health safety, and because the FDA and other agencies don't watch over us, it is time for the people to stand up and say:
I'M AS MAD AS HELL AND I'M NOT GOING TO TAKE IT ANYMORE.
http://www.margaretsoltan.com/?p=25466
Quoting:
The concept of “university” itself has dulled to the point of vanishing, Elliott suggests, in America’s compromised medical schools. “[U]niversities … must compete in a marketplace dominated by the [drug] industry and its commercial spin-offs. If more academics think like businesspeople now, it is partly because the world in which drugs are tested, developed, and marketed is so completely ruled by business.”
The Barnum and Bailey ridiculousness of professors listing eight hundred publications on their cvs tells us that the ethos of big business has come crashing into our medical schools, elevating ringmasters like Charles Nemeroff and Joseph Biederman (both of whom Elliott discusses) to the top of the profession.
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Trust? Only an idiot would trust these clowns.
@ anon 5:06
The problem is that if you don't trust these clowns, the clowns are going to label you a paranoid schizophrenic or at least psychotic. Only a crazy person would doubt their probity and benevolence.
As it stands now Betasheep. But the tides they are a changing... there will be a time that they are finally discredited and pushed to the curb. Until that time please call me Crazy, but don't ever call me Sally....lol
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