Cancer, Radiation Therapy, and the Market: Cancer Guns (Routledge Studies in the History of Science, Technology and Medicine)

Synopsis

Appraising cancer as a major medical market in the 2010s, Wall Street investors placed their bets on single-technology treatment facilities costing $100-$300 million each. Critics inside medicine called the widely-publicized proton-center boom "crazy medicine and unsustainable public policy." There was no valid evidence, they claimed, that proton beams were more effective than less costly alternatives. But developers expected insurance to cover their centers’ staggeringly high costs and debts. Was speculation like this new to health care? Cancer, Radiation Therapy, and the Market shows how the radiation therapy specialty in the United States (later called radiation oncology) coevolved with its device industry throughout the twentieth-century. Academic engineers and physicians acquired financing to develop increasingly powerful radiation devices, initiated companies to manufacture the devices competitively, and designed hospital and freestanding procedure units to utilize them. In the process, they incorporated market strategies into medical organization and practice. Although palliative benefits and striking tumor reductions fueled hopes of curing cancer, scientific research all too often found serious patient harm and disappointing beneficial impact on cancer survival. This thoroughly documented and provocative inquiry concludes that public health policy needs to re-evaluate market-driven high-tech medicine and build evidence-based health care systems.

Copyright:

2017

Book Details

Book Quality:

Publisher Quality

ISBN-13:

9781351978125

Related ISBNs:

9781315269139, 9780367348557, 9781138285248, 9781138285248, 9780367348557

Publisher:

Taylor and Francis

Date of Addition:

03/13/20

Copyrighted By:

Barbara Bridgman Perkins

Adult content:

No

Language:

English

Has Image Descriptions:

No

Categories:

History, Nonfiction, Science, Social Studies, Medicine

Submitted By:

Bookshare Staff

Usage Restrictions:

This is a copyrighted book.