Harriet Washington interviewed by Lisa Ikemoto

Harriet discussed her experiences writing and talking about the increasingly powerful “medical-industrial complex,” the erosion of informed consent in biomedical research, and the ways that commercial dynamics have aggravated issues of distributive and social justice. She also describes the resistance she has encountered when writing about these topics, especially in response to her recently published book Deadly Monopolies: The Shocking Corporate Takeover of Life Itself--And the Consequences for Your Health and Our Medical Future. She addressed opportunities for scholars to engage more directly in communicating their ideas to broader audiences and the difficulties they may face in “going public.” And she pressed the case she makes in Deadly Monopolies for what Osagie Obasogie called, in a review of the book “a broader political consciousness of science and technology.