Bibliograph

Pharmaphobia, how the conflict of interest myth undermines American medical innovation, Thomas P. Stossel

Type

Label

Pharmaphobia, how the conflict of interest myth undermines American medical innovation, Thomas P. Stossel

Language

eng

Bibliography note

Includes bibliographical references and index

Index

index present

Literary Form

non fiction

Main title

Pharmaphobia

Nature of contents

bibliography

Oclc number

894183728

Responsibility statement

Thomas P. Stossel

Sub title

how the conflict of interest myth undermines American medical innovation

Summary

For millennia, human survival depended on our innate abilities to fight pathogens and repair injuries. Only recently has medical science prolonged longevity and improved quality of life. Physicians and academic researchers contribute to such progress, but the principal contributor is private industry that produces the tools - drugs and medical devices - enabling doctors to prevent and cure disease. Heavy regulation and biology's complexity and unpredictability make medical innovation even harder in misguided pursuit of theoretical professional purity. Bureaucrats, reporters, politicians, and predatory lawyers have built careers attacking the medical products industry, belittling its critical contributions to medical innovation and accusing it of non-existent malfeasance: overselling product value, flaunting safety and corrupting physicians and academics who partner with it. The mania has imposed conflict-of-interest regulations limiting or banning valuable interactions between industry and physicians and researchers and diverting scarce resources from innovation to compliance. The victims are patients suffering from cancer, dementia, and other serious diseases for which new treatments are delayed, reduced, or eliminated as a result of these pointless regulations. ... Thomas Stossel shows how this attack on doctors who work with industry limits medical innovation and inhibits the process of bringing new products into medical care."--Jacket

Table Of Contents

The stakes -- A practitioner's history of medical innovation -- Enter the conflict-of-interest mania -- The mania mongers -- Abusing evidence -- Bad policy process -- Flawed and damaging policies -- Misunderstanding innovation -- Economic illiteracy -- Misplaced criticism of incremental innovation -- Rushing to judgment with product safety alarms -- Demonizing marketing is false advertising -- The 'gift' smoke screen -- The lawyers' ball -- The price we pay -- What is to be done?

Classification