Healthy Skepticism Library item: 8822

Warning: This library includes all items relevant to health product marketing that we are aware of regardless of quality. Often we do not agree with all or part of the contents.

Publication type: book

Brody H.
Hooked: Ethics, the Medical Profession and the Pharmaceutical Industry.
Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield 2007
http://web.archive.org/web/20070429232434/http://www.rowmanlittlefield.com/Catalog/SingleBook.shtml?command=Search&db=%5EDB/CATALOG.db&eqSKUdata=0742552195&thepassedurl=[thepassedurl]

Abstract:

For decades, medical professionals have been betraying the public’s trust by accepting various benefits from the pharmaceutical industry. Drug company representatives and doctors alike have promulgated creative rationalizations to portray this behavior positively, as if it really serves the interest of the public. In Hooked: How Medicine’s Dependence on the Pharmaceutical Industry Undermines Professional Ethics, Howard Brody claims that we can neither understand the problem, nor propose helpful solutions until we fully recognize the many levels of activity that connect these two industries. Then, for real improvement to occur, the doctors themselves need to not only change their behavior, but also change how they view the actions of their peers and colleagues. We can pass laws and enact regulations, so that those physicians that do choose to focus on ethics won’t be in an environment where they feel as if they are swimming against too strong a current to make meaningful change, but ultimately a profession has to take responsibility for its own integrity.