ULibraries Research Guides: Community Reads: Carte Blanche AND Medical Apartheid

Carte Blanche: The Erosion of Medical Consent & Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present

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University of Utah Land Acknowledgement

SCHEDULE - Tuesdays, 12:00 - 1:00 pm MT, Sept 14, 2021 - Oct 26, 2021

DATE/TIME	CHAPTERS	FACILITATORS
September 14th (35 pgs)	Carte Blanche - Preface - Informed Consent in the Time of Infection - pgs. 8-23 Carte Blanche - Chapter One - Exigencies of War- pgs. 24-42	Paloma Cariello, MD, MPH Meligha Garfield, MPA
September 21st (40 pgs)	Carte Blanche - Chapter Two - The Legacy of Nuremberg - pgs. 43-52 Carte Blanche - Chapter Three - False Blood - pgs. 53-80 Carte Blanche - Appendix - The Nuremberg Code - pgs. 161-162	Gretchen A. Case, PhD, MA Erika George, JD, MA
September 28th (44 pgs)	Carte Blanche - Chapter Four - "The Other" - pgs. 81-99 Carte Blanche - Chapter Five - Cold-Blooded Killer - pgs. 100-111 Carte Blanche - Chapter Six - Pushing "Special K" - pgs. 112-124	Gretchen A. Case, PhD, MA Heather Tanana, JD, MPH (Diné)
October 5th (35 pgs)	Carte Blanche - Chapter Seven - Erasing Consent - pgs. 125-142 Carte Blanche - Conclusion - Reclaiming Choice - pgs. 143-157 Carte Blanche - Appendix - A Bestiary of Involition - pgs. 158-159	Teneille R. Brown, JD Jose Morales Moreno, MD
October 12th - FALL BREAK	FALL BREAK - Catch up, consider reading ahead, or just take the week off and relax!	FALL BREAK
October 19th (52 pgs)	Medical Apartheid - Introduction: The American Janus of medicine and race - pgs. 1-24 PROQUEST EBSCOHOST Medical Apartheid - Chapter 10: Caged subjects: research on Black prisoners - pgs. 244-270 PROQUEST EBSCOHOST	Steven A. Bell, PhD, TRS, CTRS Valerie Flattes, PhD, APRN, MS, ANP-BC
October 26th (48 pgs)	Medical Apartheid - Chapter 11: The children's crusade: research targets young African Americans - pgs. 271-298 PROQUEST EBSCOHOST Medical Apartheid - Epilogue - Medical research with blacks today - pgs. 385-404 PROQUEST EBSCOHOST	Hannah S. Allen, BA, MFA James (Jim) Tabery, PhD

Co-Sponsored by: Spencer S. Eccles Health Sciences Library (EHSL), Office of Health Equity, Diversity & Inclusion (UHealth OHEDI), Center for Health Ethics, Arts, and Humanities (CHeEtAH), The Black Cultural Center (BCC), and The Tanner Humanities Center.

The Books

Carte Blanche: The Erosion of Medical Consent by Harriet A. Washington
Call Number: R 853.H8 W368 2021 (Print) - Check catalog for availability. ONLINE ACCESS available.
ISBN: 9781734420722
Publication Date: 2021-02-23
"Urgent, alarming, riveting, and essential." --Ibram X. Kendi "Required reading to understand the context of this pandemic." --Jelani Cobb Carte Blanche is the alarming tale of how the right of Americans to say "no" to risky medical research is being violated. Patients' right to give or withhold consent is supposed to be protected by law, but for decades medical research has been conducted on trauma victims--who are disproportionately people of color--without their consent or even their knowledge. Harriet A. Washington, the author of Medical Apartheid, is again exposing a large-scale violation of patient, civil, and human rights. She reveals that the abuse first began in the military: In 1990, the Department of Defense forced an experimental anthrax vaccine on ground troops headed for the Persian Gulf. After a 1996 loophole to federal law permitted research to be conducted even on private citizens, particularly trauma patients, the military has pressed ahead to impose nonconsensual testing of the dangerous and sometimes lethal blood substitute PolyHeme among civilians, quietly using it on more than 20,000 non-consenting victims. Since then, more than a dozen studies have used the 1996 loophole to give risky and potentially deadly drugs to patients without their knowledge, especially people of color, many of whom were already justifiably distrustful of racial bias in medicine. Carte Blanche is an exposé of a U.S. medical-research system that has proven again and again that it cannot be trusted.
Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present by Harriet A. Washington
Call Number: R853.H8 W37 2006b (Print) - Check catalog for availability. ONLINE ACCESS available.
ISBN: 9780767915472
Publication Date: 2008-01-08
The first full history of Black America's shocking mistreatment as unwilling and unwitting experimental subjects at the hands of the medical establishment. No one concerned with issues of public health and racial justice can afford not to read this masterful book that will stir up both controversy and long-needed debate. From the era of slavery to the present day, starting with the earliest encounters between Black Americans and Western medical researchers and the racist pseudoscience that resulted, Medical Apartheid details the ways both slaves and freedmen were used in hospitals for experiments conducted without their knowledge--a tradition that continues today within some black populations. It reveals how Blacks have historically been prey to grave-robbing as well as unauthorized autopsies and dissections. Moving into the twentieth century, it shows how the pseudoscience of eugenics and social Darwinism was used to justify experimental exploitation and shoddy medical treatment of Blacks. Shocking new details about the government's notorious Tuskegee experiment are revealed, as are similar, less-well-known medical atrocities conducted by the government, the armed forces, prisons, and private institutions. The product of years of prodigious research into medical journals and experimental reports long undisturbed, Medical Apartheid reveals the hidden underbelly of scientific research and makes possible, for the first time, an understanding of the roots of the African American health deficit. At last, it provides the fullest possible context for comprehending the behavioral fallout that has caused Black Americans to view researchers--and indeed the whole medical establishment--with such deep distrust.

Virtual Presentations by Author, Harriet A. Washington, MA (Columbia)

Three Virtual Presentations - October 7 & 8, 2021 by:

Harriet A. Washington, MA (Columbia)
2021 Max & Sara Cowan Memorial Lecturer & Priscilla M. Mayden Endowed Lecturer

RECORDING AVAILABLE

Thursday, October 7, 2021, 12:00-1:00 pm MDT - 'A Hideous Monster of the Mind': Medical Mythology and the Construction of 'Blackness', Internal Medicine Grand Rounds Recording is available through 11/6/2021 to current University of Utah faculty, staff and students using their UNID/PWD. Recording expires on 11/7/2021 and requires a current UofU UNID/PWD with access to UBOX.

NO RECORDING AVAILABLE

Thursday, October 7, 2021, 5:30-7:00 pm MDT - "Don't Let the Lion tell the Giraffe's Story": How the Curation of History Hobbles Medical Ethics, Zoom. Evening Ethics Discussion. No recording available.

Friday, October 8, 2021, 12:00-1:00 pm MDT - "Medical Apartheid and Beautiful Lies": Repeating the Past and Breaking the Cycle", Zoom. Cowan Memorial Public Lecture and Priscilla M. Mayden Endowed Lecture. No recording available.

Co-Sponsors: The Center for Health Ethics, Arts, and Humanities (CHeEtAH), Spencer S. Eccles Health Sciences Library (EHSL), J. Willard Marriott Library; Equity, Diversity, & Inclusion (EDI); School of Medicine Office of Health Equity, Diversity, & Inclusion (SOM OHEDI) and The Tanner Humanities Center.

About the Author

Harriet A. Washington, MA (Columbia)

Harriet A. Washington, MA (Columbia) is the 2021 Cowan Memorial Lecturer and 2021 Priscilla M. Mayden Lecturer at the University of Utah. She is a prolific science writer, editor and ethicist who is the author of the seminal Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present, which won a National Book Critics Circle Award, the PEN/Oakland Award, and the American Library Association Black Caucus Nonfiction Award and five other well-received books, including A Terrible Thing to Waste: Environmental Racism and its Assault on the American Mind as well as Carte Blanche: The Erosion of Informed Consent in Medical Research, published in 2021 by Columbia Global Reports. Ms. Washington is a Writing Fellow in Bioethics at Harvard Medical School, a Fellow of the New York Academy of Medicine, has been the 2015-2016 Miriam Shearing Fellow at the University of Nevada's Black Mountain Institute. She has also been a Research Fellow in Medical Ethics at Harvard Medical School, a Visiting Fellow at the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health, a visiting scholar at DePaul University College of Law and a senior research scholar at the National Center for Bioethics at Tuskegee University. She has held fellowships at Stanford University and teaches bioethics at Columbia University, where she delivered the 2020 commencement speech to Columbia’s School of Public Health graduates and won Columbia’s 2020 Mailman School of Public Health’s Public Health Leadership Award, as well as its 2020-21 Kenneth and Mamie Clark Distinguished Lecture Award. Washington has written widely for popular publications and has been published in referenced books and journals such as Nature, JAMA, The American Journal of Public Health, The New England Journal of Medicine, the Harvard Public Health Review, Isis, and The Journal of Law, Medicine, and Ethics. She has been Editor of the Harvard Journal of Minority Public Health, a guest Editor of the Journal of Law, Medicine and Ethics and served as a reviewer for the Journal of the American Association of Bioethics and the Humanities. Ms. Washington has also worked as a classical music announcer for public radio and curates a medical film series.

About the Facilitators

Hannah S. Allen, BA, MFA, Graduate Research Assistant, Department of Philosophy and Center for Excellence in ELSI Research (UCEER), University of Utah. BioSketch.

Steven A. Bell, PhD, TRS, CTRS, Associate Professor (Lecturer), Department of Occupational and Recreational Therapies, College of Health, University of Utah. BioSketch.

Teneille R. Brown, JD, Professor of Law, S.J. Quinney College of Law, and Adjunct Professor, Division of General Internal Medicine, Department of Internal Medicine, Spencer Fox Eccles School of Medicine, University of Utah. BioSketch.

Paloma Cariello, MD, MPH, Associate Professor (Clinical), Infectious Disease and Associate Dean for Health Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion, Spencer Fox Eccles School of Medicine, University of Utah. BioSketch.

Gretchen A. Case, PhD, MA, Director, Center for Health Ethics, Arts, and Humanities (CHeEtAH) and Associate Professor, Division of General Internal Medicine, Department of Internal Medicine, Spencer Fox Eccles School of Medicine, University of Utah. BioSketch.

Valerie Flattes, PhD, APRN, MS, ANP-BC, Associate Professor (Clinical); Associate Dean for Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion; and Specialty Track Director, Adult/Gerontology PCDNP Program, College of Nursing, University of Utah. BioSketch.

Meligha Garfield, MPA, Director, Black Cultural Center, University of Utah. BioSketch.

Erika George, JD, MA, Director, Tanner Humanities Center, and Samuel D. Thurman Professor of Law, S. J. Quinney College of Law, University of Utah. BioSketch.

José Morales Moreno, MD, Assistant Professor (Clinical), Division of General Pediatrics, Department of General Pediatrics, Spencer Fox Eccles School of Medicine, University of Utah. BioSketch.

James (Jim) Tabery, PhD, Professor, Department of Philosophy, College of Humanities and Adjunct Professor, Department of Pediatrics and Adjunct Associate Professor, Division of General Internal Medicine, Department of Internal Medicine, Spencer Fox Eccles School of Medicine, University of Utah. BioSketch.

Heather Tanana, JD, MPH, (Diné), Assistant Professor (Research) & Wallace Stegner Center Fellow, S.J. Quinney College of Law, University of Utah. BioSketch.

Book Reviews

Carte Blanche: The Erosion of Medical Consent

Book Review: Carte Blanche: The Erosion of Medical Consent. Kirkus Reviews. 1/1/2021, Vol. 89 Issue 1, 1p.

Book World: A bioethicist's warning about informed consent. (Tucker, Karen Iris) Washington Post, 12 Mar. 2021.

Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present

Harriet A. Washington, Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation On Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present. (Mills, Malcolm) The Journal of African American History, vol. 94, no. 1, winter 2009, pp. 101+.

Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present. (Spigner, Clarence) Journal of the National Medical Association, 2007 Sep; 99(9): 1074–1075.

Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present. (Markus, David) Harvard Journal of African American Public Policy, vol. 14, summer 2008, pp. 85+.

Interviews, Readings, and Presentations

Carte Blanche: The Erosion of Medical Consent

Carte Blanche: The Erosion of Medical Consent - Discussion with Harriet A. Washington at Columbia University (Host: Dr. Frances Onyimba) | 45:21 VIDEO | March 25, 2021 | Columbia University.

Medical Consent and the Vulnerable - Discussion: Harriet A. Washington, Author and Medical Ethicist; Nicholas LeMann, Director, Columbia Global Reports; Jelani Cobb, Ira A. Lipman Professor of Journalism; and Olajide A. Williams, Professor and Chief of Staff, Neurology, Columbia University | 58:50 VIDEO | March 19, 2021 | Columbia Global Reports, Columbia University.

Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present

Medical Apartheid Goes Viral: How Infection Catalyzes Bioethical Erosion with Harriet Washington | 1:29:12 VIDEO | February 8, 2021 | Harvard Medical School Center for Bioethics.

What You Need to Know about Medical Racism - An Interview with Harriet A. Washington | 38:44 PODCAST | December 24, 2020 | Black History Year - PushBlack.

Harriet Washington, "Medical Apartheid" author interview | 16:15 VIDEO | September 9, 2019 | Eastern Virginia Medical School.

Harriet A. Washington: Discussing Medical Experimentation on Black Americans | 1:25:05 VIDEO | March 7, 2017 | Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History, Detroit, MI

Related LibGuides

EHSL Subject-Based LibGuides

Antiracist Resource Guide

EHSL Community Read LibGuides

Black Man in a White Coat

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

Articles Written by Harriet A. Washington

Washington HA. The Ethics of Consent. American Scholar. 2020;89(4):12-13. September 30, 2020.

Washington HA. How environmental racism is fueling the coronavirus pandemic. Nature. 5/19/2020.

Washington HA. Statues that perpetuate lies should not stand. Nature. 9/21/17.

Washington, HA. SYMPOSIUM ARTICLE: CONTEMPORARY CHALLENGES IN INFORMED CONSENT: Limning the Semantic Frontier of Informed Consent. Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics. Fall2016, Vol. 44 Issue 3, p381-393. 13p. 1 Chart.

Washington, HA. The Well Curve: Tropical diseases are undermining intellectual development in countries with poor health care--and they're coming here next. The American Scholar, vol. 84, no. 4, Autumn 2015, pp. 18+.

Washington, HA. Bad Medicine. New Scientist. 1/21/2012, Vol. 213 Issue 2848, p24-25.

Washington, HA. Flacking for Big Pharma. The American Scholar. 6/3/2011.

Baker, RB, Washington, HA, et al. African American Physicians and Organized Medicine, 1846-1968 Origins of a Racial Divide. JAMA. 7/16/2008.

Selected Bibliography - Books available at Libraries at the University of Utah

Bad Blood by James H. Jones
Call Number: Eccles Library Browsing Collection R853.H8 J66 1993
ISBN: 0029166756
Publication Date: 1993-01-01
From 1932 to 1972, the United States Public Health Service conducted a non-therapeutic experiment involving over 400 black male sharecroppers infected with syphilis. The Tuskegee Study had nothing to do with treatment. It purpose was to trace the spontaneous evolution of the disease in order to learn how syphilis affected black subjects. The men were not told they had syphilis; they were not warned about what the disease might do to them; and, with the exception of a smattering of medication during the first few months, they were not given health care. Instead of the powerful drugs they required, they were given aspirin for their aches and pains. Health officials systematically deceived the men into believing they were patients in a government study of bad blood, a catch-all phrase black sharecroppers used to describe a host of illnesses. At the end of this 40 year deathwatch, more than 100 men had died from syphilis or related complications.
Beyond Bioethics by Osagie K. Obasogie (Editor); Marcy Darnovsky (Editor)
Call Number: ONLINE ACCESS only.
ISBN: 9780520961944
Publication Date: 2018-03-09
For decades, the field of bioethics has shaped the way we think about ethical problems in science, technology, and medicine. But its traditional emphasis on individual interests such as doctor-patient relationships, informed consent, and personal autonomy is minimally helpful in confronting the social and political challenges posed by new human biotechnologies such as assisted reproduction, human genetic modification, and DNA forensics. Beyond Bioethics addresses these provocative issues from an emerging standpoint that is attentive to race, gender, class, disability, privacy, and notions of democracy--a "new biopolitics." This authoritative volume provides an overview for those grappling with the profound dilemmas posed by these developments. It brings together the work of cutting-edge thinkers from diverse fields of study and public engagement, all of them committed to this new perspective grounded in social justice and public interest values.
Experimentation with Human Beings by Jay Katz
Call Number: Marriott Library Level 1: General Collection KF3827.M38 K35 (Print) and Faust Law Library Level 4 KF3827 .M38 K35 1972 (Print) - Check catalog for availability.
ISBN: 0871544385
Publication Date: 1972-07-24
In recent years, increasing concern has been voiced about the nature and extent of human experimentation and its impact on the investigator, subject, science, and society. This casebook represents the first attempt to provide comprehensive materials for studying the human experimentation process. Through case studies from medicine, biology, psychology, sociology, and law--as well as evaluative materials from many other disciplines--Dr. Katz examines the problems raised by human experimentation from the vantage points of each of its major participants--investigator, subject, professions, and state. He analyzes what kinds of authority should be delegated to these participants in the formulation, administration, and review of the human experimentation process. Alternative proposals, from allowing investigators a completely free hand to imposing centralized governmental control, are examined from both theoretical and practical perspectives. The conceptual framework of Experimentation with Human Beings is designed to facilitate not only the analysis of such concepts as "harm," "benefit," and "informed consent," but also the exploration of the problems raised by man's quest for knowledge and mastery, his willingness to risk human life, and his readiness to delegate authority to professionals and rely on their judgment.
Infectious Madness by Harriet A. Washington
Call Number: Marriott Library Level 1: General Collection RC455.4.B5 W373 2015 (Print) - Check catalog for availability.
ISBN: 9780316277808
Publication Date: 2015-10-06
Is it possible to catch autism or OCD the same way we catch the flu? Can a child's contact with cat litter lead to schizophrenia? In her eye-opening new book, National Book Critics Circle Award-winning author Harriet Washington reveals that we can in fact "catch" mental illness. In INFECTIOUS MADNESS, Washington presents the new germ theory, which posits not only that many instances of Alzheimer's, OCD, and schizophrenia are caused by viruses, prions, and bacteria, but also that with antibiotics, vaccinations, and other strategies, these cases can be easily prevented or treated. Packed with cutting-edge research and tantalizing mysteries, INFECTIOUS MADNESS is rich in science, characters, and practical advice on how to protect yourself and your children from exposure to infectious threats that could sabotage your mental and physical health.
Killing the Black Body by Dorothy Roberts
Call Number: Marriott Library Level 1: General Collection HQ766.5 .U5 R58 1997 (Print) and Faust Law Library Level 4 HQ766.5 .U5 R58 1999 (Print) - Check catalog for availability. ONLINE ACCESS available.
ISBN: 0679758690
Publication Date: 1998-12-29
Killing the Black Body remains a rallying cry for education, awareness, and action on extending reproductive justice to all women. It is as crucial as ever, even two decades after its original publication. "Monumental. . . . An important contribution to the literature of civil rights, reproductive issues, racism and feminism." --San Francisco Chronicle In 1997, this groundbreaking book made a powerful entrance into the national conversation on race. In a media landscape dominated by racially biased images of welfare queens and crack babies, Killing the Black Body exposed America's systemic abuse of Black women's bodies. From slave masters' economic stake in bonded women's fertility to government programs that coerced thousands of poor Black women into being sterilized as late as the 1970s, these abuses pointed to the degradation of Black motherhood--and the exclusion of Black women's reproductive needs in mainstream feminist and civil rights agendas. "Compelling. . . . Deftly shows how distorted and racist constructions of black motherhood have affected politics, law, and policy in the United States." --Ms.
The Nazi Doctors and the Nuremberg Code by George J. Annas (Editor); Michael A. Grodin (Editor)
Call Number: Marriott Library Level 1: General Collection R853.H8 N87 1992
ISBN: 0195070429
Publication Date: 1992-05-07
The atrocities committed by Nazi physicians and researchers during World War II prompted the development of the Nuremberg Code to define the ethics of modern medical experimentation utilizing human subjects. Since its enunciation, the Code has been viewed as one of the cornerstones of modern bioethical thought. The sources and ramifications of this important document are thoroughly discussed in this book by a distinguished roster of contemporary professionals from the fields of history, philosophy, medicine, and law. Contributors also include the chief prosecutor of the Nuremberg Military Tribunal and a moving account by a survivor of the Mengele Twin Experiments. The book sheds light on keenly debated issues of both science and jurisprudence, including the ethics of human experimentation; the doctrine of informed consent; and the Code's impact on today's international human rights agenda. The historical setting of the Code's creation, some modern parallels, and the current attitude of German physicians toward the crimes of the Nazi era, are discussed in early chapters. The book progresses to a powerful account of the Doctors' Trial at Nuremberg, its resulting verdict, and the Code's development. The Code's contemporary influence on both American and international law is examined in its historical context and discussed in terms of its universality: are the foundational ethics of the Code as valid today as when it was originally penned? The editors conclude with a chapter on foreseeable future developments and a proposal for an international covenant on human experimentation enforced by an international court. A major work in medical law and ethics, this volume provides stimulating, provocative reading for physicians, legal professionals, bioethicists, historians, biomedical researchers, and concerned laypersons.
A Terrible Thing to Waste by Harriet A. Washington
Call Number: Eccles Library Browsing Collection GE230.W37 2020 (Print) - Check catalog for availability.
ISBN: 9780316509442
Publication Date: 2020-08-04
A powerful indictment of the notion of hereditary intelligence, A Terrible Thing to Waste shows how environmental racism drives the black-white IQ gap and explains what can be done to remedy its toxic effects on marginalized communities. The 1994 publication of the The Bell Curve and its controversial thesis catapulted the topic of genetic racial differences in IQ to the forefront of renewed and heated debate. Now, in A Terrible Thing to Waste, award-winning science writer Harriet A. Washington adds her incisive analysis to the fray. She takes apart the spurious notion of intelligence as an inherited trait, pointing instead to environmental racism -- a confluence of institutional factors that relegate marginalized communities to living and working near sites of toxic waste, pollution, and urban decay -- as the prime cause of the reported black-white IQ gap. Investigating the deleterious heavy metals, neurotoxins, deficient prenatal care, bad nutrition, and pathogens as the main factors influencing intelligence, Washington explains why certain communities are so disproportionally affected and what can be done to remedy the problem. Featuring extensive scientific research and Washington's sharp, lively reporting, A Terrible Thing to Waste is sure to outrage, transform the conversation and inspire debate.
White Coat, Black Hat by Carl Elliot
Call Number: Marriott Library Level 1: General Collection R724 .E385 2010 (Print) - Check catalog for availability.
ISBN: 9780807061428
Publication Date: 2010-09-14
Over the last twenty-five years, medicine and consumerism have been on an unchecked collision course, but, until now, the fallout from their impact has yet to be fully uncovered. A writer for The New Yorker and The Atlantic Monthly, Carl Elliott ventures into the uncharted dark side of medicine, shining a light on the series of social and legislative changes that have sacrificed old-style doctoring to the values of consumer capitalism. Along the way, he introduces us to the often shifty characters who work the production line in Big Pharma: from the professional guinea pigs who test-pilot new drugs and the ghostwriters who pen "scientific" articles for drug manufacturers to the PR specialists who manufacture "news" bulletins. We meet the drug reps who will do practically anything to make quota in an ever-expanding arms race of pharmaceutical gift-giving; the "thought leaders" who travel the world to enlighten the medical community about the wonders of the latest release; even, finally, the ethicists who oversee all that commercialized medicine has to offer from their pharma-funded perches. Taking the pulse of the medical community today, Elliott discovers the culture of deception that has become so institutionalized many people do not even see it as a problem. Head-turning stories and a rogue's gallery of colorful characters become his springboard for exploring larger ethical issues surrounding money. Are there certain things that should not be bought and sold? In what ways do the ethics of business clash with the ethics of medical care? And what is wrong with medical consumerism anyway? Elliott asks all these questions and more as he examines the underbelly of medicine.