******************** POSTING RULES & NOTES ******************** #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. *****************************************************************
(The documentary discussed in this article just became available on Netflix.)
Under the regulatory apparatus of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the category of medical device includes everything from tongue depressors and heating pads to imaging technologies and implantable technologies ranging from stents to pacemakers. It is this last category, devices that become an enduring part of the patients in whom they are implanted, that claim the spotlight in The Bleeding Edge. Are such medical devices a “means to an end of unleashing innovation to improve and save lives,” as one industry lobbyist featured in the film insists to a room full of business people and politicians? Or are they the latest instruments of the iatrogenic culture of medicine? By 2050, the techno-optimists of this room are told, their organs will be custom-regenerated and their doctors will be computers. It’s a futurist fantasy that’s at least a century old but has yet to become obsolete. A reporter covering the medical industry goes so far as to suggest that the production and use of medical devices are not only “a way of life for post-industrial society — they are a reason for the existence of post-industrial society.”
full: https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/caring-for-capitalism/ _________________________________________________________ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
