Money, Morals, & Medicine: Commercialism Meets Professionalism
Becoming a Physician series, March 31, 2005
© University of Southern California
More Info: Becoming a Physician speaker series
Event description: by Joshua Hornstein
Medicine is not simply MERCHANDISE, and the relationship between the doctor and patient is profanely distorted when conceived in terms of ECONOMICS: the doctor a merchant, the patient a customer. What comes to pass in the doctor's office is profoundly a HUMAN association, involving CONCERN, TRUST, RESPONSIBILITY. The doctor is commander-in-chief in the battle for survival. It is no secret that the image of the doctor in the mind of the public and profession itself is deteriorating. The admiration for medical science is increasing, the respect for its practitioners is decreasing.
Is dehumanization and commercialization the price we must pay for technical progress? If medicine is not to lose its calling, it must be concerned with its own health. I invite you to understand this "diagnosis" a little better... Enjoy the third lecture from the first semester of the Becoming A Physician speaker series where we discuss the issue "Money, Morals, and Medicine: Commercialism Meets Professionalism."
The event featured 3 expert panelists:
- Dallas Willard, Ph.D., Professor of Philosophy, University of Southern California
- David A. Goldstein, M.D., Associate Professor of Medicine, USC Keck School of Medicine; Chief, Geriatric and General Internal Medicine; Vice Chair for Clinical Affairs; Co-Director, USC Pacific Center for Health Policy and Ethics
- Neil S. Wenger, M.D., M.P.H., Chair, UCLA Medical Center ethics committee; Director, Primary Care research fellowship in UCLA Division of General Internal Medicine; Professor of Medicine, University of California, Los Angeles