快猫短视频

SEEKING to expand the market for cigarettes in the 1920s, the American Tobacco Company solicited the aid of public relations mastermind Edward L. Bernays. He proposed to target women, who were still stigmatised for smoking, by organising a brigade of models to march across Manhattan showing their liberation by puffing on 鈥渢orches of freedom鈥�. We might be tempted to dismiss the campaign鈥檚 success as an instance of jazz-age naivety. But as bioethicist Carl Elliott shows in White Coat, Black Hat, Bernays鈥檚 strategy guides the tactics used by pharmaceutical firms today.

What is most impressive, and disturbing, about this book is its description of the scope of manipulation routinely undertaken by drug companies, and its cumulative effect on public health. Taken on their own, many of the details are not especially surprising, such as drug reps buttering up doctors with doughnuts and tote bags. Indeed, Elliott鈥檚 tendency to dwell on these specifics, familiar to anyone who reads a newspaper, undermines his more worthy effort to show how their interrelationship amounts to 鈥渁 medical system in which deception is not just tolerated but rewarded鈥�.

Over the past generation, medicine has evolved from a profession based on trust into a business with enormous profit potential. Manipulation is rewarded because it is rewarding, and, as Elliott writes, 鈥渘obody is willing to concede that trust may no longer be warranted鈥�. It is now the domain of Edward L. Bernays.