The spraying of herbicides violated the spirit of treaties outlawing chemical warfare. Technological blindness and cynicism promoted a method of war which was not only destructive, but accomplished little militarily. There is proposed legislation in the U.S. Congress to build a new variety of nerve gas projectile, the...
Tag - medicine
Physicians play a crucial role in modern American society. No power of the physician has been more far-reaching than the power to determine which drugs can be "safely" given to the American public. A relatively small number of doctors have almost absolute control over the safety and effectiveness standards used in...
Throughout the spring of 1975, massive strikes by medical students, interns and residents directed against foreign funding of the health sciences threatened to engulf Colombia. Under this pressure the Universidad del Valle in Cali, Colombia, requested that the U.S.-funded International Center for Medical Research...
The drug industry is expert at making a profit. For the past 10 years, it has either been the first or second most profitable of all industries in the U.S. At the outset, we must decry the immorality of an industry exploiting people’s suffering and diseases, turning it into the most profitable business in America.
The drug industry works hard to contact and influence students throughout their medical education. In the classroom, drug companies reach students by providing films, slides, speakers, research grants, and even pharmacology teachers. Drug advertising dominates the pages and budgets of medical journals. From the time...
In the thirty years from 1945 to the present, federal support for biomedical research has increased over 1000-fold to its current 1.7 billion dollar level. This increase in federal support for biomedical research has not been accompanied by a corresponding increase in federal support for health care. In fact, as shown...
That exposure to chemicals leads to cancer in humans has been know for two hundred years. In 1775 a British physician noted the high incidence of cancer among chimney sweeps, and correctly attributed it to their exposure to coal tar and soot. Since then a vast body of evidence has accumulated showing that many...
In our initial enthusiasm for a women's movement, it seemed to us as if our common experiences as women — the expectation that we would all be housewives, our lower pay, the degrading use of our bodies in a thousand different ways — were so overwhelming that we could overcome all other divisions which split us up...
In the middle of May, as students at Harvard Medical School were preparing for their exams, as many medical schools around the country were completing their admissions decisions, as President Ford spoke of "alternatives to busing," Bernard D. Davis, a Professor at Harvard Medical School, stirred up a storm the impact...
The health care system and the industrial health and safety conditions in America can only be described as institutional murder. In recent years radicals have worked to create alternatives to present health structures, to confront and expose the capitalist health system, and to organize around health and safety issues...