The role of whistleblowers in uncovering medical scandals

Doctors can be socialized to cooperate in morally despicable evil, says bioethicist May 9, 2024 – Michael Cook Bioethicist Carl Elliott seems to relish stirring up fellow bioethicists and the medical profession. In his latest book, The Occasional Human Sacrifice: Medical Experimentation and the Price of Saying No, he examines the role of whistleblowers in uncovering medical scandals. He knows from experience. He fought for years to get his own institution, the University of Minnesota, to acknowledge its role in the suicide of a man in an industry-funded clinical trial of antipsychotic drugs. The New York Times recently published a brief excerpt from his book in which he asks why doctors end up participating in atrocities like the Tuskegee syphilis trials or the Willowbrook hepatitis study. Elliott is scathing. He says that students and doctors can be socialised into accepting morally indefensible situations. Courageous whistleblowers are essential to shatter the bubble of self-assured expertise. Medical traditions are notoriously difficult to uproot, and academic medicine does not easily tolerate ethical dissent. I doubt the medical profession can be trusted to reform itself … Read more »