Healthy Skepticism Library item: 2707

Warning: This library includes all items relevant to health product marketing that we are aware of regardless of quality. Often we do not agree with all or part of the contents.

Publication type: news

Egilman D, Bohme S.
Corporate Corruption of Science
International Journal of Occupational and Environmental Health 2005 Nov 1
http://web.archive.org/web/20051205015457/http://www.ijoeh.com/pfds/IJOEH_1104_Egilman.pdf

Abstract: Although occupational and environmental diseases are often viewed as isolated and unique failures of science, the government, or industry to protect the best interest of the public, they are in fact an outcome of a pervasive system of corporate priority setting, decision making, and influence. This system produces disease because political, economic, regulatory and ideological norms prioritize values of wealth and profit over human health and environmental well-being. Science is a key part of this system; there is a substantial tradition of manipulation of evidence, data, and analysis, ultimately designed to maintain favorable conditions for industry at both material and ideological levels. This issue offers examples of how corporations influence science, shows the effects that influence has on environmental and occupational health, and provides evidence of a systemic problem.

Notes:

Ralph Faggotter’s Comments:

This brilliant article gets to the heart of many of the problems besetting modern science.

It will be fascinating to Healthy Skeptics and is deeply relevant to the problems facing modern medicine and its relationship with the pharmaceutical industry.

Who gets to determine the philosophical framework within which we operate?

Full text:

see http://www.ijoeh.com/pfds/IJOEH_1104_Egilman.pdf
at http://www.ijoeh.com/