Search PubMed⌕ Search

SEARCH · Search PubMed

Results for “Commodification”

Search indexed PubMed citations on genomics, clinical trials, systematic reviews and public health. Explore titles, authors and supplied subject terms, then open the PubMed record.

Quote a phrase for an exact phrase match. Source license links do not imply unrestricted reuse.

At least 109 records · Page 6Linked to original sources
PubMed1999

Herbal remedies: issues in licensing and economic evaluation.

In recent years, the use of alternative therapies has become widespread. In particular, there has been a resurgence in the public's demand for herbal remedies, despite a lack of high-quality evidence to support the use of many of them. Given the increasing pressures to control healthcare spending in most countries, it is not surprising that attention is being focused on the cost effectiveness of herbal remedies. We address the question of whether there is sufficient information to enable the assessment of the cost effectiveness of herbal remedies. In so doing, we discuss the current state of play with several of the more high-profile alternative herbal remedies [Chinese medicinal herbs for atopic eczema, evening primrose oil, ginkgo biloba, hypericum (St John's wort)] and some which have made the transition from being alternative to being orthodox remedies. We use historical context to discuss, on the one hand, the increasing commodification of herbal remedies and on the other, the trend towards greater regulatory control and licensing of alternative herbal remedies. We argue that unless great care is exercised, these changes are not necessarily in the best interests of patients. In order to identify cost-effective care, we need reliable information about the costs as well as the efficacy and safety of the treatments being assessed. For most alternative therapies, such data are not available. We believe that studies to gather such data are long overdue. Whilst we argue strongly in favour of control of some herbal remedies, we urge caution with the trend towards licensing of all herbal remedies. We argue that the licensing of those herbal remedies with equivocal benefits and few risks, as evidenced by a long history of safe use, increases barriers to entry and increases societal healthcare costs.

Complementary Therapies↗
PubMed1984

Selected myths guiding the Reagan Administration's health policies.

This article analyzes four major assumptions that guide the Reagan Administration's health policies: 1) the Administration received an overwhelming popular mandate to reduce the federal role in the U.S. health sector; 2) the size and growth of federal social (including health) expenditures are contributing to the current economic recession; 3) the costs to business of federally imposed health and safety regulations have contributed to making the U.S. economy less competitive; and 4) market intervention is intrinsically more efficient than government intervention in regulating the costs and distribution of health resources. Based on these assumptions, the main characteristics of the Reagan Administration's health policies have been 1) a reduction of federal health expenditures and, very much in particular, expenditures to the poor, handicapped, and elderly; 2) a weakening of federal health and safety regulations to protect workers, consumers, and the environment; and 3) the further privatization and commodification of medical services. This article shows that there is no evidence to support the assumptions on which these policies are based. Quite to the contrary, all available evidence shows the opposite: 1) the majority of Americans want an expansion of federal health expenditures and a strengthening of federal health regulation; 2) U.S. government expenditures and regulations are much more limited than those of other countries whose economies are performing more satisfactorily; and 3) those countries with larger government interventions have more efficient health care systems than the American one, where the "free market" forces are primarily responsible for the allocation of resources. Thus, major Reagan Administration health policies are based on myth rather than reality.

Economic Competition↗
PubMed1996

Health as an irreversible part of the welfare state: Canadian government policy under the Tories.

This article provides an assessment of the health policy of the Canadian Conservative government under Brian Mulroney, 1984-1993. Underlying this assessment is the need to test the theory of the irreversibility of the welfare state in the light of its health component. The author argues that despite a political rhetoric that might have presaged a sharp rollback of Canada's Medicare, either through residualization or progressive commodification, Canada emerged from this period of New Right federal government with its state-funded health care system still in place. This argument is substantiated through a consideration of the social policy model inherited by the Mulroney government and how it was affected by the government's fiscal policies between 1984 and 1993.

Canada↗
PubMed2001

"Evil reports" for "ignorant minds"? Patient experience and public confidence in the emerging modern hospital: Vancouver General Hospital, 1912.

The process whereby the 19th-century Canadian charity hospital for the sick poor was transformed into a centre for scientific health care for the whole community was well in hand by World War I. To fund this transition, and to cope with the subsequent unrelieved demand from all social classes for accessibility to hospitalization, hospitals instituted differentiated services, offering premium care and privacy to paying patients whose fees, in turn, sustained a more economical level of open ward maintenance for indigent patients. As the record of a 1912 public investigation into patient grievances and complaints against the Vancouver General Hospital reveals, the commodification of hospital-based health care reproduced in the hospital environment the social attitudes, controls, and structures of the wider community. This development appeared to contradict the hospitals promise of undifferentiated, scientifically-mediated, medical efficiency and efficacy for all, and its reputation as a humane and caring institution. Notwithstanding the inquiry's conclusion that these grievances were "evil reports" designed to appeal to "ignorant minds," they reveal a patient population of already informed consumers ready, willing and able to discriminate between the promise and the reality of hospital-centred health care for all.

Canada↗
PubMed2000

Ethnography and the Meta-Narratives of Modernity.

Current attempts to increase the relevance of sociocultural anthropology encourage anthropologists to engage in the study of modernity. In this discourse dominated by sociologists, the contribution of anthropology is often to reveal cultural diversity in globalization, leading to the notion of multiple modernities. Yet such ethnographic accounts draw upon familiar sociological abstractions such as time-space compression, commodification, individualization, disenchantment, and reenchantment. This article shows how an underlying meta-narrative preempts social scientific argument by making shifts in analytical scales look natural, as in the alleged need to "situate" the particular in "wider" contexts. This analytical procedure undermines what is unique in the ethnographic method-its reflexivity, which gives subjects authority in determining the contexts of their beliefs and practices. Two ethnographic case studies are presented to support this argument, one from Melanesia on current interests in white people, money, and consumption and the other from Africa on born-again Christianity and individuality. The article ends by reflecting not only on the limits of metropolitan meta-narratives in returning relevance to anthropology but also on the contemporary conditions of academic work that undermine the knowledge practices of ethnography and render such meta-narratives plausible.

Journal Article↗
PubMed2001

Indigenous property rights and river management.

The presence of indigenous property rights and interests arising from the survival of native title in Australia presents unique issues in the management of rivers and riverine lands. Existing common law and statutory tidal and non-tidal rights are a complex overlay of public and private property rights which are themselves undergoing significant change through the commodification of many natural resources by Commonwealth and State governments, such as marine species stock and non-tidal water. The melding of indigenous values and management practices with existing management regimes for rivers and riverine lands offers considerable potential for both sustainability of resource utilisation, and respect and recognition of native title with resultant predicted benefits in the vexed area of compensation.

Animals↗
PubMed1990

Is women's labor a commodity?

...A commercial surrogate mother is anyone who is paid money to bear a child for other people and terminate her parental rights, so that the others may raise the child as exclusively their own. The growth of commercial surrogacy has raised with new urgency a class of concerns regarding the proper scope of the market. Some critics have objected to commercial surrogacy on the ground that it improperly treats children and women's reproductive capacities as commodities. The prospect of reducing children to consumer durables and women to baby factories surely inspires revulsion. But are there good reasons behind the revulsion? And is this an accurate description of what commercial surrogacy implies? This article offers a theory about what things are properly regarded as commodities which supports the claim that commercial surrogacy constitutes an unconscionable commodification of children and of women's reproductive capacities.

Adoption↗
PubMed2001

Legal regulation of surrogate motherhood in Israel.

The Israeli Law on surrogate motherhood demands a preconception agreement to include payments to be made to the surrogate mother. Surrogacy arrangements with family members are forbidden. Commercial surrogacy is allowed and encouraged. The Law causes many problems. Validity of consent given by surrogate mothers is doubtful. Possible future psychological harm are ignored. There is a danger of "commodification" of children. Abusing women of low socio-economic status as breeding machines may be another outcome. No clear responsibility is imposed on the "intended parents" for an impaired child. The law ignores possibility of divorce or death of the "intended parents" before the child's birth. Splitting motherhood is another social problem that has to be dealt with. So far the sperm of the husband from the "intended parents" has to be used, but further steps may follow. It is not certain that a policy of "positive eugenics" will not develop.

Child Custody↗
PubMed2001

Ethical sensitivity and the goals of medicine: resisting the tides of medical deprofessionalisation.

There is a growing concern that, like in many developed countries, medical practice in Singapore is fast losing its role and status as a profession. The commodification and industrialisation of health care, and weakening of its ethical foundations are among the main forces threatening to deprofessionalise the practice of medicine. To overcome these challenges, an honest and introspective review of the goals of medicine and an affirmation of the ethical values of medicine are needed in order to reinstate the unique role of medicine in our society. Important steps to take include adopting a patient-centred philosophy and practice culture, promoting and emphasising ethical awareness and sensitivity among physicians, and active participation in constructive dialogues to negotiate the social contract of the profession. A more permanent impact may be achieved through cultivation of medical virtues in physicians, and the integration of core elements of medical professionalism into the ethical systems and mission statement of today's health care organisations.

Ethics, Medical↗
PubMed1995

Financial incentives for organ procurement. Ethical aspects of future contracts for cadaveric donors. Council on Ethical and Judicial Affairs, American Medical Association.

Resolution 6, introduced at the 1993 Annual Meeting by the Medical Schools Section and referred to the Board of Trustees, called on the American Medical Association to review various options to enhance the availability of transplantable organs. The Council responds with this report and with a companion report on mandated choice and presumed consent for organ donation.

Altruism↗
PubMed1995

Surrogacy: ethical, legal, and social aspects.

In considering the interrelated ethical, legal and social aspects of surrogacy we acknowledge that society has long accepted the delegation of various parenteral functions and explore the role of a surrogate in relationship to this as well as alluding to commoner comparisons with prostitution and adultery. In particular, the "birth mother" rule, the public antipathy to "commercial" surrogacy and restrictive legislation are explored and found to be inappropriate. It is concluded that the regulation, surveillance and assessment needed to ensure the best outcome for all concerned would perhaps be easiest achieved in programmes that are formally licensed under permissive legislation and adequately funded by "commercial" means.

Bioethics↗
PubMed1998

Health care allocation, public consultation and the concept of 'health'.

By comparing models of market-based allocation with state-controlled national health care systems, it will be suggested that the way in which different communities deal with the allocation of health care is central to their expression of what might be called a moral self-understanding. That is to say that the provision of health care may be expected to be a focus of communal debate, not simply about morally acceptable and unacceptable actions, but also about the community's understanding of what it is that makes for a worthwhile and morally defensible human life. This moral self-understanding is seen to be entwined with the different concepts of 'health' that are implicit in different systems of allocation. In conclusion, it will be suggested that decisions concerning health care allocation must be made in response to a continuing, public and open debate about what health and health care mean to a particular community.

Attitude to Health↗
PubMed1998

Curiosity, imagination, compassion, science and ethics: do curiosity and imagination serve a central function?

Curiosity and imagination have been neglected in epistemology. This paper argues that the role of curiosity and imagination is central to the way we think, regardless of whether it is thinking about problems of ethics or problems of science. In our ever more materialistic society, curiosity and reason are either discouraged or narrowly channeled. I shall argue that the role of curiosity and imagination for both science and ethics is so important that nurturing them can be seen as an ethical obligation and suppressing them as ethically problematic.

Capitalism↗
PubMed2003

Patients' health or company profits? The commercialisation of academic research.

This paper is a personal account of the events associated with the author's work at the University of Toronto's Hospital for Sick Children on a drug, deferiprone, for the treatment of thalassaemia. Trials of the drug were sponsored by the Canadian Medical Research Council and a drug company which would have been able, had the trials been successful, to seek regulatory approval to market the drug. When evidence emerged that deferiprone might be inadequately effective in a substantial proportion of patients, the drug company issued legal threats when the author proposed informing her patients and the scientific community. Until protests were made by international authorities in her field of research, the hospital and university did not adequately support the author's academic freedom and responsibilities as a medical practitioner. It is argued that underlying cause of this, and of other similar cases, is the political philosophy which is driving the commercialisation of universities and bringing about the deregulation of drug approval procedures. Together these changes constitute a serious threat to the public good.

Biomedical Research↗