I. What is the most striking change in the practice of medicine in the past hundred years? Fifty years? Five years?
II. How has the practice of medicine been affected by commercialism?
a. Role of insurance companies?
b. Role of HMOs?
c. Role of drug companies?
d. Effect of commercialism on medical research?
1) Controversy involving uses of replacement hormones for post-menopausal women—see pages 165-66 in The Disability Rights Movement?
2) Controversy over impact of Vioxx and other anti-inflammatory and pain medication drugs?
3) Are drug companies that profit from sale of drugs doing the testing? If so, how does this affect the results of the tests?
4) Has the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) ever been compromised in its role as monitors of drugs?
III. How did people with AIDS, themselves, pressure the FDA and the National Institutes of Health to find drugs that would transform the disease from a fatal one to a chronic one? See The Disability Rights Movement, pages 166-168.
a. How does the high cost of AIDS drugs affect treatment?
b. What has been done about such cost? What more can be done?
c. How should the United States and other nations deal with AIDS as a world-wide pandemic?
