Deadly Monopolies: The Shocking Corporate Takeover of Life Itself--And the Consequences for Your Health and Our Medical Future. |  | Author: Harriet A. Washington
Publisher: Doubleday
Category: Book
List Price: $28.95
Buy New: $14.44
as of 5/21/2012 02:13 CDT details
You Save: $14.51 (50%)
New (42) Used (23) from $11.29
Seller: LucyHar's Books
Sales Rank: 130,197
Languages: English (Unknown), English (Original Language), English (Published)
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1
Pages: 448
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.6
Dimensions (in): 6.4 x 1.5 x 9.6
ISBN: 0385528922
EAN: 9780385528924
ASIN: 0385528922
Publication Date: October 4, 2011
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
| |
| Similar Items:
| |
| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
From the award-winning author of Medical Apartheid, an exposé of the rush to own and exploit the raw materials of life—including yours.
Think your body is your own to control and dispose of as you wish? Think again. The United States Patent Office has granted at least 40,000 patents on genes controlling the most basic processes of human life, and more are pending. If you undergo surgery in many hospitals you must sign away ownership rights to your excised tissues, even if they turn out to have medical and fiscal value. Life itself is rapidly becoming a wholly owned subsidiary of the medical- industrial complex.
Deadly Monopolies is a powerful, disturbing, and deeply researched book that illuminates this “life patent” gold rush and its harmful, and even lethal, consequences for public health. It examines the shaky legal, ethical, and social bases for Big Pharma’s argument that such patents are necessary to protect their investments in new drugs and treatments, arguing that they instead stifle the research, competition, and innovation that can drive down costs and save lives. In opposing the commodification of the body, Harriet Washington provides a crucial human dimension to an often all-too-abstract debate.
Like the bestseller The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Deadly Monopolies reveals in shocking detail just how far the profit motive has encroached in colonizing human life and compromising medical ethics. It is sure to stir debate—and instigate change.
|
| |
|
|
|
