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| Here Michael Goodwin explains that his whole book is an intervention |
Background (from our recent work, before we get to the new Blog project):
• Item: Three scientists from Georgetown publish a piece in Journal of medical ethics which pretty much proves that Continuing Medical Education has been hijacked by drug companies to construct new medical 'conditions' so that their drugs will find a market. As they say ' Hypoactive sexual desire disorder is a typical example of a condition that was sponsored by industry to prepare the market for a specific treatment.' So it really isn't real? INTERVENTION! (Go HERE to read their abstract.)
• Item: The Journal of medical ethics establishes a Blog where concerned (read: pissed off) scientists can express themselves on serious, public 'matters of concern.' INTERVENTION!
•Item: One of the authors of the CME paper publishes a passionate, informed blog piece on how the very idea of HSDD is not just false (bad science), but misogynist: 'The labeling of flibanserin reveals the absurdity of this “disease” and its treatment. In fact, hypoactive sexual desire disorder (HSDD) was invented by pharmaceutical manufacturers.' She calls it 'regulatory failure.' Go girl. Feminist INTERVENTION! (Go HERE for Adriane's blog.)
Item: Faced with the expiration of their 20-year patent on the blockbuster drug Prilosec®, Astra-Zenica splits the omeprazole molecule into its two enantiomers and re-patents the left isomer as Nexium® though it has no clinical efficacy. Nexium® costs 28 times its generic, just-as-good ancestor, and Astra-Zenica spends .5 billion dollars advertising its new drug in the first year, also establishing GERD as a legitimate medical condition (which can't be diagnosed) through sponsored CME. Robin joins in writing an amicus curae ('friend of the court') brief to the US Patent office opposing patents on enantiomeric drugs. It fails, but in January of 2007, the European Union Patent Office rejected new patents for all 'enantiomer-based' drugs. INTERVENTION!
Item: One of the lead authors of the anti-ADDYI pieces writes a detailed article on the whole sordid, misogynist, greedy story of 'the female Viagra' for the Hastings Center. And, in fact, the entire Hastings Center mission is all an ethical INTERVENTION!
Problem: --> Does ANY of this matter? Are 'minds changed'? Do things 'get better'?
This issue is central to what Science Studies calls 'rhetoric of science,' and it will engage us for the rest of our work. At stake is whether and how we can 'intervene' in the complex web of culture to make a difference. Writing. Blogging. Protesting. Making films, songs, YouTube vids, whatever. How do you change a mind? CAN you change a mind? Pretty important in the era of bots, 'fake news,' Cambridge Analytica, Facebook selling us out, and the entire 'post-truth' moment.
Well, we know it must be possible; we know each of us has changed. Now to look at how and why. LOTS more on that presently.
The Blog:
• Item: Three scientists from Georgetown publish a piece in Journal of medical ethics which pretty much proves that Continuing Medical Education has been hijacked by drug companies to construct new medical 'conditions' so that their drugs will find a market. As they say ' Hypoactive sexual desire disorder is a typical example of a condition that was sponsored by industry to prepare the market for a specific treatment.' So it really isn't real? INTERVENTION! (Go HERE to read their abstract.)
• Item: The Journal of medical ethics establishes a Blog where concerned (read: pissed off) scientists can express themselves on serious, public 'matters of concern.' INTERVENTION!
•Item: One of the authors of the CME paper publishes a passionate, informed blog piece on how the very idea of HSDD is not just false (bad science), but misogynist: 'The labeling of flibanserin reveals the absurdity of this “disease” and its treatment. In fact, hypoactive sexual desire disorder (HSDD) was invented by pharmaceutical manufacturers.' She calls it 'regulatory failure.' Go girl. Feminist INTERVENTION! (Go HERE for Adriane's blog.)
Item: Faced with the expiration of their 20-year patent on the blockbuster drug Prilosec®, Astra-Zenica splits the omeprazole molecule into its two enantiomers and re-patents the left isomer as Nexium® though it has no clinical efficacy. Nexium® costs 28 times its generic, just-as-good ancestor, and Astra-Zenica spends .5 billion dollars advertising its new drug in the first year, also establishing GERD as a legitimate medical condition (which can't be diagnosed) through sponsored CME. Robin joins in writing an amicus curae ('friend of the court') brief to the US Patent office opposing patents on enantiomeric drugs. It fails, but in January of 2007, the European Union Patent Office rejected new patents for all 'enantiomer-based' drugs. INTERVENTION!
Item: One of the lead authors of the anti-ADDYI pieces writes a detailed article on the whole sordid, misogynist, greedy story of 'the female Viagra' for the Hastings Center. And, in fact, the entire Hastings Center mission is all an ethical INTERVENTION!
Problem: --> Does ANY of this matter? Are 'minds changed'? Do things 'get better'?
This issue is central to what Science Studies calls 'rhetoric of science,' and it will engage us for the rest of our work. At stake is whether and how we can 'intervene' in the complex web of culture to make a difference. Writing. Blogging. Protesting. Making films, songs, YouTube vids, whatever. How do you change a mind? CAN you change a mind? Pretty important in the era of bots, 'fake news,' Cambridge Analytica, Facebook selling us out, and the entire 'post-truth' moment.
Well, we know it must be possible; we know each of us has changed. Now to look at how and why. LOTS more on that presently.
The Blog:
But for now, how about something simpler? How about reading a comic book? How about looking at how we came to see the economic universe? Let's explore this in a nicely limited, focused way, starting with your reading of Economix (all of it, we hope by now). Start making sense of how, and how well, it works as an intervention into the way we see the economic / political world we live in. You're looking for a place where you learned something, And / or a place where you felt something. And / or a place where the book tied to things in your life. All our usual analytical questions apply. How did you feel, reading it — and why? The comic / graphic-novel format, of course. But also the particular historical / economic facts and events he includes; was any of it new? What? and did it matter? How does Goodwin's friendly little nice-guy narrator relate to you? Adam Smith coming in like God to remind us what he really said? How does the tone — hipster earnest and searching — make you feel, and why? By what methods does he legitimate his arguments — and with what effect? Goodwin, like Lewontin and Pollan, and unlike Brang and Pinker, takes an explicit political position. Does this bring him closer to 'truth,' 'the facts,' and/or 'reality'? Why? Corporation 'persons' as glowering, smoking skyscrapers? Capitalists as Fat Cats and crooks? One of us, as we talked in my office, pointed at the little beaten guy on the cover, pulling out his empty pockets and said 'me.' Point taken.
Anchor your piece in specifics: As little as a frame, as much as a chapter. Characters, pages, facts, language, arguments, positions. It's a graphic-novel text, so we're close-reading the story-in-pictures that makes the arguments.
Feel free to answer any or all of these questions, in whatever order — and to go further or take your own path. Feel free to bring in anything from anywhere you found it, if that helps you — your econ course, your crappy manager at Kohls, arguments with Aunt Mary about how we're going to Make America Great Again — but you don't need to; you can stick with Mike. Feel free to narrate from your own life experience, if it relates. Whatever you need to do in order to take us, in the most compelling way possible, through your encounter with the unique, perpetually controversial intervention that is Economix.
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