A BITTER PILL
What a strange, uniquely illusive figure the doctor is. The art of medicine is so manifestly a higher purpose – the safe guarding of human life itself – that its practitioners enjoy a kind of immaculate moral authority. Yet these doctors are also the front line vendors in an industrial complex, which includes hospitals, equipment-makers, insurance companies and drug firms, with eyes all fastened on their profit margins. The industry relies on the doctor’s unimpeachable image. In the US, in particular, the gap between saviour and salesman is a chance to make money offthe most captive of markets: the sick hoping to get well again.
One of the
