TY - BOOK ID - 77860803 TI - What price better health? : hazards of the research imperative AU - Callahan, Daniel AU - Milbank Memorial Fund. PY - 2003 SN - 1282358219 9786612358210 1417510595 0520939239 1598750003 9780520939233 9781417510597 9780520227712 0520227719 9781598750003 0520227719 9781282358218 6612358211 0520246640 9780520246645 PB - Berkeley, CA : University of California Press, DB - UniCat KW - Morals KW - Ethics, Research KW - Research KW - Medicine KW - Health Workforce KW - Laboratory Research KW - Research Activities KW - Research and Development KW - Research Priorities KW - Activities, Research KW - Activity, Research KW - Development and Research KW - Priorities, Research KW - Priority, Research KW - Research Activity KW - Research Priority KW - Research, Laboratory KW - Research Ethics KW - Human Experimentation KW - Animal Experimentation KW - Embryo Research KW - Fetal Research KW - Morality KW - Retrospective Moral Judgment KW - Social aspects KW - ethics KW - american medicine. KW - american society. KW - annual budgets. KW - bioethics. KW - boundaries of science. KW - capitalist society. KW - controversial. KW - drug companies. KW - economic needs. KW - health care costs. KW - health care system. KW - health researchers. KW - human cloning. KW - human subjects. KW - limits of research. KW - medical burdens. KW - medical progress. KW - medical research. KW - medical testing. KW - moral issues. KW - morality. KW - political history. KW - profit motives. KW - research imperative. KW - social needs. KW - sociology. KW - stem cell research. UR - https://www.unicat.be/uniCat?func=search&query=sysid:77860803 AB - The idea that we have an unlimited moral imperative to pursue medical research is deeply rooted in American society and medicine. In this provocative work, Daniel Callahan exposes the ways in which such a seemingly high and humane ideal can be corrupted and distorted into a harmful practice. Medical research, with its power to attract money and political support, and its promise of cures for a wide range of medical burdens, has good and bad sides-which are often indistinguishable. In What Price Better Health?, Callahan teases out the distinctions and differences, revealing the difficulties that result when the research imperative is suffused with excessive zeal, adulterated by the profit motive, or used to justify cutting moral corners. Exploring the National Institutes of Health's annual budget, the inflated estimates of health care cost savings that result from research, the high prices charged by drug companies, the use and misuse of human subjects for medical testing, and the controversies surrounding human cloning and stem cell research, Callahan clarifies the fine line between doing good and doing harm in the name of medical progress. His work shows that medical research must be understood in light of other social and economic needs and how even the research imperative, dedicated to the highest human good, has its limits. ER -