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

Harriet A. Washington (Author)

Book 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.


From the Hardcover edition.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Praise for Harriet A. Washington's Deadly Monopolies:

“Important. . . . Humane. . . . An extraordinary achievement. . . . Deadly Monopolies explores contentious issues in modern biomedical research that have been aggravated by the field’s commercial emphasis. . . . Washington offers an overarching framework that enables readers to see connections that are often obscured. The book’s brilliance lies in the compassionately told narratives of individuals whose lives have been affected by the increasing corporate control of scientific research.”
—The American Prospect
 
“Harriet Washington shines her relentless torch into the darkest corners of Big Pharma with courage, dedication and accuracy.”
—John le Carré

“Harriet Washington has written an important and compelling book. She shows how recent changes in patent law have caused drug prices to soar, while reducing innovation by drug companies to near-zero. Well-documented, yet highly readable, the book paints a vivid picture of an industry that now exploits monopoly rights to patients’ genes, and relies on taxpayer-funded NIH research for its few novel and important drugs—even as it turns out an endless stream of trivial variations of top-selling old drugs.”
—Marcia Angell, M.D., author of The Truth About the Drug Companies and former editor of the New England Journal of Medicine

“Big Pharma is not going to like Deadly Monopolies one bit, but you probably will—especially if, like most Americans, you’re finding the co-pay on your drugs too much to handle. Washington correctly reminds us that, as hard as high drug costs are in the USA, they are lethal for the world’s poor. Brava Harriet Washington!”
—Laurie Garrett, Pulitzer Prize-winning writer and author of I Heard the Sirens Scream: How Americans Responded to the 9/11 and Anthrax Attacks

“Patents, we’re repeatedly told, are crucial to fostering innovation. Deadly Monopolies reveals how the privatization of medical science is retarding research, putting patients at risk, and making what cures we have exorbitantly expensive. This book is a meticulously documented exposé of what’s gone wrong with our medical innovation system, and a roadmap for change.”
—Merrill Goozner, author of The $800 Million Pill: The Truth Behind The Cost of New Drugs

“[Washington] adeptly details the wide-ranging repercussions of this monopolistic research model and recounts chilling anecdotes that reveal a pattern of shady practices by biotech and pharma companies. . . . The author clearly presents data to elucidate these complex issues, and cogently argues that there are opportunities to reinstate transparency, collaboration and altruism in drug development and disbursement. A gripping, revelatory account.”
—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

About the Author

Harriet A. Washington is the author of Medical Apartheid, which won a National Book Critics Circle Award, the 2007 PEN Oakland Award, and the 2007 American Library Association Black Caucus Nonfiction Award. She has been a fellow in medical ethics at the Harvard Medical School, a senior research scholar at the National Center for Bioethics at Tuskegee University, a fellow at the Harvard School of Public Health, and the recipient of a John S. Knight Fellowship at Stanford University.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• File Size: 2606 KB
• Print Length: 448 pages
• Publisher: Anchor; 1 edition (October 4, 2011)
• Sold by: Random House Digital, Inc.
• Language: English
• ASIN: B004EWEUV0
• Text-to-Speech: Enabled
• X-Ray: Not Enabled
• Lending: Not Enabled
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #372,759 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
  • #45 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Nonfiction > Professional & Technical > Law > Intellectual Property > Patent, Trademark & Copyright

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

25 of 31 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Dr. Washington hit this one out of the park October 31, 2011

By Saundra Minneapolis

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

Dr. Washington's ability to present very complicated information in an understandable way for the masses is amazing. Her references are impeccable. She presents facts in a way that you can form your own opinion and follow references to clarify and verify. This is an excellent read for anyone who might cross the healthcare system in any way and I guess that means anyone who is alive. Congratulations on a work well done.

9 of 13 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Important work November 13, 2011

By A

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

An important work that should be widely read despite a couple of forced examples that would have made a stronger argument by their absence. I subtracted a star because of her ridiculing of some disabling and disfiguring male health concerns, at odds with the empathy she shows in the rest of the book. Anyone who similarly ridiculed investment in female reproductive health would be strongly denounced, I suspect especially by the author herself.

11 of 16 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Prepare to be shocked and dismayed December 17, 2011

By Campanile

Format:Hardcover

This isn't the world you thought you lived in. Harriet Washington is an excellent writer, who has made sense out of masses of medical material and shared some startling facts with us. She has sounded the alarm and we need to heed it, before it is too late for our children and their children. Kudos to you Ms. Washington for writing this explosive book (and taking the time to set the negative commenter straight). Wow.

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