Pharmaphobia
How the Conflict of Interest Myth Undermines American Medical Innovation
by Thomas P. Stossel
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Pub Date Apr 14 2015 | Archive Date Apr 24 2015
Rowman & Littlefield | Rowman & Littlefield (Academic)
Description
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 extremely difficult and expensive.
Pharmaphobia describes how an ideological crusade, stretching over the last quarter century, has used distortion and flawed logic to make medical innovation even harder in a 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. With breathtaking detail, 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.
Thomas P. Stossel, M.D., is a hematologist and medical researcher at Boston’s Brigham & Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School where he is the American Cancer Society Professor of Medicine. He is also a Visiting Scholar of the American Enterprise Institute. He served as head of hematology- oncology at the Massachusetts General, of experimental medicine and hematology at Brigham & Women’s, president of the American Society for Clinical Investigation and of the American Society of Hematology, and as editor in chief of the Journal of Clinical Investigation. He has authored 290 publications and two textbooks and is an inventor on 11 issued patents. In recognition of his scientific research accomplishments he was elected to the exclusive National Academy of Sciences and has received awards and honorary degrees. He is now editor in chief of Current Opinion in Hematology. With his wife, Kerry Maguire, DDS, MSPH and others, Stossel co-founded a 501(c)(3) charity, Options for Children in Zambia that provides voluntary dental and medical care in that Sub-Saharan African country. He has published op-eds in the Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, and other mainstream media.
Pharmaphobia describes how an ideological crusade, stretching over the last quarter century, has used distortion and flawed logic to make medical innovation even harder in a 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. With breathtaking detail, 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.
Thomas P. Stossel, M.D., is a hematologist and medical researcher at Boston’s Brigham & Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School where he is the American Cancer Society Professor of Medicine. He is also a Visiting Scholar of the American Enterprise Institute. He served as head of hematology- oncology at the Massachusetts General, of experimental medicine and hematology at Brigham & Women’s, president of the American Society for Clinical Investigation and of the American Society of Hematology, and as editor in chief of the Journal of Clinical Investigation. He has authored 290 publications and two textbooks and is an inventor on 11 issued patents. In recognition of his scientific research accomplishments he was elected to the exclusive National Academy of Sciences and has received awards and honorary degrees. He is now editor in chief of Current Opinion in Hematology. With his wife, Kerry Maguire, DDS, MSPH and others, Stossel co-founded a 501(c)(3) charity, Options for Children in Zambia that provides voluntary dental and medical care in that Sub-Saharan African country. He has published op-eds in the Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, and other mainstream media.
A Note From the Publisher
You are reviewing uncorrected page proofs. Quote only from finished book. Contact publicity@rowman.com with questions. Thank you!
You are reviewing uncorrected page proofs. Quote only from finished book. Contact publicity@rowman.com with questions. Thank you!
Advance Praise
When
it comes to medical academics, Tom Stossel has suffered the slings and
arrows of the so-called healthcare elite -- and he's not going to take
it anymore! Pharmaphobia
is a blunt, honest, smart, frightening, and unvarnished look at why we
need to stop thinking in terms of "good guys and bad guys" and start
thinking about allies and partners. It's the only way to save American
healthcare.
— Peter J. Pitts, Former FDA Associate Commissioner; President, Center for Medicine in the Public Interest
A distinguished Harvard hematologist and basic researcher, Tom Stossel is passionately interested in ensuring that scientific progress is translated into tangible benefit for patients. Stossel’s focus is on real-world impact; he is acutely aware of the many challenges associated with transforming a nascent idea into a clinical advance, and recognizes the pivotal role industry can play in catalyzing and driving this difficult process. In Pharmaphobia, Stossel embraces a nuanced and integrative vision that values both innovative science and market forces. Patients are fortunate to have a determined and relentless clinical champion like Tom Stossel in their corner.
— David A. Shaywitz, MD, PhD, Chief Medical Officer, DNAnexus, and Co-Founder and West Coast Innovation Lead, MGH/MIT Center for Assessment Technology and Continuous Health (CATCH)
At last, someone willing to challenge the Zeitgeist. In Pharmaphobia, Tom Stossel shines an uncomfortable light on a world where transparency has morphed into bias. Stossel makes clear how America’s obsession with hidden motives and imagined conspiracies has deprived us of the kind of advice and products that could save our lives.
— Paul A. Offit M.D., MD, Professor of Pediatrics, The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia
At last, a scholarly treatise on excessive conflict-of-interest regulations that impede the interaction of academic scientists with companies that can turn their discoveries into therapeutic triumphs. This book is a must-read for all who believe that one day they will need a medicine or device to relieve their pain, or to forestall death.
— Michael Brown, M.D., Paul J. Thomas Professor of Molecular Genetics and Director of the Jonsson Center for Molecular Genetics at UT Southwestern
Only a skeptic who has spent a half-century inside the belly of the academic medicine beast would have the knowledge and experience to write this brilliant, take-no-prisoners expose of what Thomas Stossel dubs the “conflict-of-interest narrative.” An insider has finally come out and told the tale of the conspiracy of government bureaucrats, medical poseurs, and their law-industry accomplices, that not only impedes medical research and innovation, but persecutes and prosecutes those who run afoul of regulations that make little scientific or sense. This book will prove to be a landmark in the counter-revolution that aims to improve both the medical and legal systems.
— Harvey Silverglate, criminal defense and civil liberties trial lawyer, and author of Three Felonies a Day: How the Feds Target the Innocent (2009)
— Peter J. Pitts, Former FDA Associate Commissioner; President, Center for Medicine in the Public Interest
A distinguished Harvard hematologist and basic researcher, Tom Stossel is passionately interested in ensuring that scientific progress is translated into tangible benefit for patients. Stossel’s focus is on real-world impact; he is acutely aware of the many challenges associated with transforming a nascent idea into a clinical advance, and recognizes the pivotal role industry can play in catalyzing and driving this difficult process. In Pharmaphobia, Stossel embraces a nuanced and integrative vision that values both innovative science and market forces. Patients are fortunate to have a determined and relentless clinical champion like Tom Stossel in their corner.
— David A. Shaywitz, MD, PhD, Chief Medical Officer, DNAnexus, and Co-Founder and West Coast Innovation Lead, MGH/MIT Center for Assessment Technology and Continuous Health (CATCH)
At last, someone willing to challenge the Zeitgeist. In Pharmaphobia, Tom Stossel shines an uncomfortable light on a world where transparency has morphed into bias. Stossel makes clear how America’s obsession with hidden motives and imagined conspiracies has deprived us of the kind of advice and products that could save our lives.
— Paul A. Offit M.D., MD, Professor of Pediatrics, The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia
At last, a scholarly treatise on excessive conflict-of-interest regulations that impede the interaction of academic scientists with companies that can turn their discoveries into therapeutic triumphs. This book is a must-read for all who believe that one day they will need a medicine or device to relieve their pain, or to forestall death.
— Michael Brown, M.D., Paul J. Thomas Professor of Molecular Genetics and Director of the Jonsson Center for Molecular Genetics at UT Southwestern
Only a skeptic who has spent a half-century inside the belly of the academic medicine beast would have the knowledge and experience to write this brilliant, take-no-prisoners expose of what Thomas Stossel dubs the “conflict-of-interest narrative.” An insider has finally come out and told the tale of the conspiracy of government bureaucrats, medical poseurs, and their law-industry accomplices, that not only impedes medical research and innovation, but persecutes and prosecutes those who run afoul of regulations that make little scientific or sense. This book will prove to be a landmark in the counter-revolution that aims to improve both the medical and legal systems.
— Harvey Silverglate, criminal defense and civil liberties trial lawyer, and author of Three Felonies a Day: How the Feds Target the Innocent (2009)
Available Editions
| EDITION | Hardcover |
| ISBN | 9781442244627 |
| PRICE | $38.00 (USD) |
