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David Healy2

Medicine: The Need for a New Paradigm

David Healy

David Healy, a world-leading Professor of Psychiatry, highlights how 'evidence-based medicine' has led to unscientific medical practice and the need to shift to a new paradigm.

Start Date: 3rd February 2025
Instructor
  • DavidHealy
    David Healy

    Professor in Psychological Medicine, critic of lack of neutrality on psychotropic drugs

Categories

About the Course

Running since 2014, the IAI Academy is a curated series of short courses where world leading thinkers present their original perspective on the big questions of our time. The aim of the Academy is not simply to present the agreed facts, but to intervene in the current debates shaping philosophy, politics, art and science today.

All of the IAI Academy courses are filmed at the festival and will be developed by us into an online course, which will be featured on our web platform iai.tv. Each course will consist of videos, an assessment and an online discussions board which will be freely available.

About the Instructor

  • David Healy

    We are losing sight and sense of health'

    David Healy is a true powerhouse in the world of pharmacology and psychiatry! This trailblazing professor and historian has made a name for himself by fearlessly tackling some of the most pressing issues in medicine today. His research focuses on the contribution of antidepressants to suicide and the history of pharmacology. He is also known for criticising a lack of neutrality regarding psychotropic drugs and his role in ‘Toronto Affair’ over academic freedom.

    Healy's work isn't just influential - it's downright revolutionary. His groundbreaking book, Pharmageddon, pulls back the curtain on the American medical industry, exposing the ways in which pharmaceutical giants market diseases and manipulate the authority of academics and journalists for their own gain.

    "An enfant terrible―and a very brave man. I doubt he is on Pfizer’s Christmas card list." - Times Literary Supplement

Course Syllabus

  • Part One: Neoliberalism in healthcare
    Is 'evidence based medicine' real or just marketing hype? Have we surrendered control of our lives to medical professionals and Big Pharma?
  • Part Two: Relationship-based medicine
    What is 'relationship based medicine'? How could the judgments we and our doctors arrive at together be more scientific than clinical trials?

Suggested Further Readings

Neoliberalism and healthcare

  • Harvey, David. A Brief History of Neoliberalism. Oxford University Press, 2005. (Chapters on neoliberal governance and economic rationality)
  • Brown, Wendy. Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism’s Stealth Revolution. Zone Books, 2015. (Chapter on the marketization of social life, including health)
  • Klein, Naomi. The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. Picador, 2007. (Selections on health systems and neoliberal restructuring)
  • Navarro, Vicente. "Neoliberalism as a Class Ideology; Or, The Political Causes of the Growth of Inequalities." International Journal of Health Services, vol. 37, no. 1, 2007, pp. 47-62.
  • Rose, Nikolas. The Politics of Life Itself: Biomedicine, Power, and Subjectivity in the Twenty-First Century. Princeton University Press, 2006.
  • Horton, Richard. "Offline: The Case Against Neoliberal Health." The Lancet, vol. 389, no. 10072, 2017, p. 1683.
  • Waitzkin, Howard. Medicine and Public Health at the End of Empire. Paradigm Publishers, 2011. (Selections on structural adjustment programs and healthcare)
  • Sparrow, Robert. "Neoliberalism and New Medical Technologies." Journal of Bioethical Inquiry, vol. 16, no. 4, 2019, pp. 491-497.

Patient as client

  • Rose, Nikolas, and Joelle M. Abi-Rached. Neuro: The New Brain Sciences and the Management of the Mind. Princeton University Press, 2013.
  • Petersen, Alan, and Deborah Lupton. The New Public Health: Health and Self in the Age of Risk. Sage, 1996.
  • Metzl, Jonathan M., and Anna Kirkland, eds. Against Health: How Health Became the New Morality. NYU Press, 2010.
  • Ehrenreich, Barbara. Bright-Sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America. Picador, 2010.

Practical examples

  • Horton, Richard. "COVID-19 and the Collapse of Neoliberalism: Reimagining Social Medicine." The Lancet, vol. 397, no. 10280, 2021, pp. 345-348.
  • Klein, Ezra. "How Capitalism Killed My Mother." The New York Times, March 19, 2023.
  • McGoey, Linsey. The Unknowers: How Strategic Ignorance Rules the World. Zed Books, 2019. (Chapters on philanthropy, Gates Foundation, and global health)