Over the past several decades, a gradual reduction in state funding has pressured patient groups into forming private-sector partnerships, raising an important ethical question: do these alliances ultimately lead to policies that are counter to the public interest? Health activist, scholar, and cancer survivor Sharon Batt examines the issue by investigating Canada’s breast cancer movement from 1990 to 2010.Health Advocacy, Inc. dissects the relationship between the compani...

Longlisted for British Columbia's National Award for Canadian Non-Fiction 2018Dr. Danielle Martin sees the challenges in our health care system every day. As a family doctor and a hospital vice president, she observes how those deficiencies adversely affect patients. And as a health policy expert, she knows how to close those gaps. A passionate believer in the value of fairness that underpins the Canadian health care system, Dr. Martin is on a mission to improve me...

Health Care in Canada examines the challenges faced by the Canadian health care system, a subject of much public debate. In this book Katherine Fierlbeck provides an in-depth discussion of how health care decisions are shaped by politics and why there is so much disagreement over how to fix the system.Many Canadians point to health care as a source of national pride; others are highly critical of the system's shortcomings and call for major reform. Yet meaningful debate ca...

“Samantha King explains how, beyond being an all-too-frequent and still-too-lethal disease for many women, breast cancer is a corporate dream come true.” —Herizons“Fascinating. King’s deft and thoughtful interpretation of the pink ribbon phenomenon is an important wake-up call. Going against the grain, she takes a clear-eyed look at a trend that often seems to outshine the disease that put it on the map.” —Women’s Review of Books“King’s criticisms of breast-cancer philanthr...

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 t...

Doctors in Denial examines the relationship between the Canadian medical profession and the pharmaceutical industry, and explains how doctors have become dependents of the drug companies instead of champions of patients' health. Big Pharma plays a role in every aspect of doctors' work. These giant, wealthy multinationals influence how medical students are trained and receive information, how research is done in hospitals and universities, what is published in leading medical journ...

Winner of the first prize in the Health and Social Care category at the BMA Medical Book Awards 2016.With chapters on 25 different countries, this practical and succinct guide to the world's major health systems explores what lessons can be drawn from each to improve health worldwide. Each chapter is an essay designed to give the reader essential knowledge of the history, strengths, weaknesses and lessons of each health system and provide a truly global health perspective – all in ...

Anthropologist Crane (Univ. of Washington-Bothell) presents a solidly documented and well-reasoned discussion of AIDS and its far-reaching effects. An excellent overview deals with resistance to treatment.. Recommended. Graduate students, faculty, professionals.―ChoiceA work of outstanding interdisciplinary scholarship, Scrambling for Africa will be of interest to audiences in anthropology, science and technology studies, African studies, ...

Canadian Science, Technology, and Innovation Policy presents new critical analysis about related developments in the field such as significantly changed concepts of peer review, merit review, the emergence of big data in the digital age, and the rise of an economy and society dominated by the internet and information.The authors scrutinize the different ways in which federal and provincial policies have impacted both levels of government, including how such policies impact...

With Inclusion, Steven Epstein argues that strategies to achieve diversity in medical research mask deeper problems, ones that might require a different approach and different solutions.Formal concern with this issue, Epstein shows, is a fairly recent phenomenon. Until the mid-1980s, scientists often studied groups of white, middle-aged men—and assumed that conclusions drawn from studying them would apply to the rest of the population. But struggles involving advocacy group...

The phenomenal growth of global pharmaceutical sales and the quest for innovation are driving an unprecedented search for human test subjects, particularly in middle- and low-income countries. Our hope for medical progress increasingly depends on the willingness of the world's poor to participate in clinical drug trials. While these experiments often provide those in need with vital and previously unattainable medical resources, the outsourcing and offshoring of trials also create new prob...

According to the World Health Organization, one-third of the global population lacks access to essential medicines. Should pharmaceutical companies be ethically or legally responsible for providing affordable medicines for these people, even though they live outside of profitable markets? Can the private sector be held accountable for protecting human beings' right to health?This thought-provoking interdisciplinary collection grapples with corporate responsibility for the provision...