Deadly Monopolies: The Shocking Corporate Takeover of Life

Deadly Monopolies: The Shocking Corporate Takeover of Life Itself--And the Consequences for Your Health and Our Medical Future.

From the award-winning author of Medical Apartheid, an exposÃ© of the rush to own and exploit the raw materials of lifeâ€”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 â€œlife patentâ€ gold rush and its harmful, and even lethal, consequences for public health. It examines the shaky legal, ethical, and social bases for Big Pharmaâ€™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 debateâ€”and instigate change.

From the Hardcover edition.
Country USA
Manufacturer Anchor
Binding Kindle Edition
ReleaseDate 2011-10-04
Format Kindle eBook

Country	USA
Manufacturer	Anchor
Binding	Kindle Edition
ReleaseDate	2011-10-04
Format	Kindle eBook

Deadly Monopolies: The Shocking Corporate Takeover of Life Itself--And the Consequences for Your Health and Our Medical Future.

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