**From the award-winning author of Medical Apartheid, an exposé of the
rush to own and exploit the raw materials of life--including yours.
**
Think your body is your own to control and dispose of as you wish? Think
again. The United States Patent Office has granted at least 40,000
patents on genes controlling the most basic processes of human life, and
more are pending. If you undergo surgery in many hospitals you must sign
away ownership rights to your excised tissues, even if they turn out to
have medical and fiscal value. Life itself is rapidly becoming a wholly
owned subsidiary of the medical-industrial complex.
Deadly Monopolies is a powerful, disturbing, and deeply researched
book that illuminates this "life patent" gold rush and its harmful, and
even lethal, consequences for public health. Like the bestselling The
Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, it reveals in shocking detail just
how far the profit motive has encroached in colonizing human life and
compromising medical ethics.