Experimenting with the consumer : the mass testing of risky products on the American public / Marshall S. Shapo.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Shapo, Marshall S., 1936-

Series:

Non-Series

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Human experimentation in medicine--Law and legislation--United States.

Human experimentation in medicine.

Products liability--United States.

Products liability.

Technological innovations--Law and legislation--United States.

Technological innovations.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (302 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Distribution:

New York : Bloomsbury Publishing (US), 2024.

Place of Publication:

Westport, Conn. : Praeger Publishers, 2008.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Experimenting With The Consumer exposes the hazards of the mass-market experimentation in which every American consumer and worker is unwittingly tapped for product risk data by manufacturers, scientists, and regulators. Vioxx, Heparin, Avandia, Paxil, fen-phen, estrogens, silicone implants, pacemakers, formaldehyde in FEMA trailers, 60 buckyballs in coatings ... the headlines are increasingly filled with hidden risks coming to light in popular products years after federal agencies approve them for the American public. Shapo shows readers how to get past unreasonable trust or fear and make the best risk-management choices for themselves and their families. He walks them through what questions to ask before consenting to be in a clinical trial; how to evaluate the implied bold-print claims against the small-print disclosures in advertisements for medical products; how to uncover product and environmental risks in their homes, workplaces, supermarkets, and neighborhoods; how to assess and control product risk while maximizing consumer choice and benefit; how to pressure government to tighten consumer protection; and how to seek legal redress. Through a diverse selection of dramatic case studies, Shapo lays bare the incentives of companies and entrepreneurial scientists to fake or obscure experimental data before and after government approval; the fights between interested and disinterested scientists over data; the fights between scientists and doctors over patient rights; the campaigns of activists against government agencies to release experimental drugs; the impact of the journalistic and promotional media on public knowledge and perception of product risk; and the marketing tricks that manufacturers use to harness sexual desire to product launches and to shape the prescription choices of physicians.

Contents:

Experimentation : a survey at trench level

HIV/AIDS drugs : speeding up science, under political pressure

Breast implants : a parable of law's response to improvements on nature

Treating thyself-for men only : viagra

Estrogens : a gathering of data, a gathering storm

Estrogens, the storm breaks : a struggle of medicine, law, and politics

Experiments at the billionth level : nanotechnology.

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9798400649011

9786612333781

9781282333789

128233378X

9780313365287

0313365288

OCLC:

667001941