Abstract

There is an important cultural context to the relationship between physicians and the pharmaceutical industry. I'll label it, for simplicity, "postmodernism" (Kaplan 1993). Any single definition of a large cultural force, like socialism or communism or conservatism or liberalism, is bound to be inadequate in some ways. Yet general concepts can apply to such large forces. Postmodernism can have various nuances, but generally it applies to a way of thinking that is quite common nowadays: a skepticism about truth, knowledge, science, and about any claims to being absolute about anything. One way of appreciating this way of thinking is to contrast it with its predecessors: the modern or Enlightenment era involved a ..