I suspect I would not much like the Remaking the American Patient book–it seems to blame capitalism for all of the ills of the healthcare system. But it does include one compelling example of the limitations of government regulation of drugs: allowing strychnine while restricting peppermint.
(p. D3) Medical historians who focus on the conquest of dire diseases serve up narratives of progress and triumph. Not Ms. Tomes, a professor of history at Stony Brook University, who has chosen to examine instead the health care experience of average healthy citizens, the great silent majority whose lives are punctuated by a variety of minor ills and only the occasional major calamity.
. . .
Are you perplexed by our regulatory chaos, with layer upon layer of well-meaning but persistently ineffective efforts to guarantee the safety of medical services? It turns out we come from a long tradition of such inadequacy: Patient safety has been the holy grail for everyone, long sought, never achieved.
Drug regulatory efforts have been inconsistent and confusing. (At one point in the 1940s, peppermint drops were available by prescription, while strychnine could be freely purchased by anyone).
For the full review see:
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the review has the date Jan. 23, 2016 [sic], and has the title “Review: ‘Remaking the American Patient’.”)
The book under review above is:
Tomes, Nancy. Remaking the American Patient: How Madison Avenue and Modern Medicine Turned Patients into Consumers, Studies in Social Medicine. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2016.