Medicalization In The Novel Blood Medicine By Katherine Sharp

The Effects of Medicalization
In the novel “Blood Medicine” by Katherine Sharp the reader is taken through a story about Mark Duxbury, a drug salesman, his stirring lawsuit, and his fight against big-pharma. The book shows how Duxbury faced the corporate giant for exploiting innocent patients, and the regulatory weakness surrounding pharmaceutical drugs and the way they are advertised. The novel forces the reader to question the growth of medicalization in daily life through the story of an anti-anemia drug, known as Procrit, Epogen or Aranesp that had been developed by the company Amgen and sold by Johnson and Johnson. The narrative is primarily told from a marketing perspective, allowing an inside look into the common practices of selling …show more content…
Countless issues are being treated as medical problems when they could be solved in alternative ways, leading to many advancements in medical research and pharmaceuticals that are potentially unnecessary. For many of the problems listed, individuals hold at least some responsibility for the development of their conditions, for example, obesity and high cholesterol both could be prevented or solved with methods other than prescription medication. Despite this, customers are regularly treated with medications without having to face questioning about their lifestyles and the consequences of their actions such as overeating or …show more content…
Though the novel is able to show how much progress is made due to the use of Henrietta Lack’s cells, the reader is also shown how much pain both Henrietta and her family went through in order for that progress to be made. Similarly to the novel “Blood Medicine”, we are shown how deceptive the people and companies behind these medical products can be. In Skloot’s novel, we see how much the scientists were unconcerned with Henrietta Lack’s health through all the horrible and aggressive medical tests they did to her, as well as how long it even took them to give Henrietta’s name and family the real credit they deserved for the medical advances that were made. In “Blood Medicine” the reader sees how much effort the large pharmaceutical corporations went through in order to cover up Mark Duxbury’s testimony and the lack of concern they had for their clients when producing the dangerous drug