What Price Better Health?: Hazards of the Research ImperativeThe idea that we have an unlimited moral imperative to pursue medical research is deeply rooted in American society and medicine. In this provocative work, Daniel Callahan exposes the ways in which such a seemingly high and humane ideal can be corrupted and distorted into a harmful practice. Medical research, with its power to attract money and political support, and its promise of cures for a wide range of medical burdens, has good and bad sides—which are often indistinguishable. In What Price Better Health?, Callahan teases out the distinctions and differences, revealing the difficulties that result when the research imperative is suffused with excessive zeal, adulterated by the profit motive, or used to justify cutting moral corners. Exploring the National Institutes of Health's annual budget, the inflated estimates of health care cost savings that result from research, the high prices charged by drug companies, the use and misuse of human subjects for medical testing, and the controversies surrounding human cloning and stem cell research, Callahan clarifies the fine line between doing good and doing harm in the name of medical progress. His work shows that medical research must be understood in light of other social and economic needs and how even the research imperative, dedicated to the highest human good, has its limits. |
Contents
| 1 | |
THE EMERGENCE AND GROWTH OF THE RESEARCH IMPERATIVE | 11 |
PROTECTING THE INTEGRITY OF SCIENCE | 36 |
IS RESEARCH A MORAL OBLIGATION? | 57 |
CURING THE SICK HELPING THE SUFFERING ENHANCING THE WELL | 85 |
ASSESSING RISKS AND BENEFITS | 114 |
USING HUMANS FOR RESEARCH | 133 |
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abortion advocacy aging behavioral Behavioral Genetics Bioethics biological biomedical research biotechnology budget cancer child claim clinical Commission companies Congress cultural cure death debate developed countries disability disease drugs economic efforts Embryo Research England Journal enhancement ethical federal funds gene therapy genetic Genome goals of medicine groups harm Harold Varmus Hastings Center Report health care costs human cloning Human Genome Project human subjects human-subject research important improve increase individual informed consent interest issue Journal of Medicine kind knowledge less lives means medical research moral Nuremberg Code Parkinson's disease patients percent pharmaceutical industry physicians political possible precautionary principle principle priority setting problems profit protection public health reason recombinant DNA regulation research imperative research priorities response risk-benefit risk-benefit analysis scientific Scientific Misconduct scientists setting priorities simply social society standards stem cell research technologies tion University Press York