For Immediate Release
March 16, 2011

Media Contact:

Kara Tershel, (202) 662-9037

Gregg Bloche

WASHINGTON, D.C. - Who decides whether obesity should be considered a disability or a matter of personal choice? Who determines whether students should be given drugs to boost academic performance? Who was called upon after 9/11 to devise interrogation methods for accused terrorists and other criminals?

Increasingly, warns Georgetown University Law Center Professor M. Gregg Bloche, these decisions are being left in the hands of doctors. In his new book, The Hippocratic Myth: Why Doctors Are Under Pressure to Ration Care, Practice Politics, and Compromise Their Promise to Heal (Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), Bloche contends that doctors are putting patients at risk by succumbing to pressure from insurance companies, hospital bureaucrats, government officials and courts of law, who are expanding medicine’s public role for their own benefit.  He also uncovers new findings regarding doctors' roles in designing post-9/11 interrogation techniques.

"In The Hippocratic Myth, Dr. Gregg Bloche offers a beautifully written, thoughtful, and compelling account of the many ways doctors today are called upon to compromise their adherence to the Hippocratic Oath while appearing to remain faithful," notes Elyn Saks, author of The Center Cannot Hold.

"Gregg Bloche’s provocative book deserves careful reading by everyone who cares about physician integrity and the social compact between doctors and patients," said Harvey Fineberg, president of the Institute of Medicine.

Bloche asserts that skyrocketing costs and the economic constraints of medical breakthroughs have threatened doctors’ commitment to putting patients first. He believes that doctors have become not only caregivers, but cost arbiters who are expected to make life and death decisions based on spending limits enforced by health insurers. He maintains that even with vast improvements in medical knowledge and technology, physicians are counted on to ration care in order to keep spending in check.

According to Bloche, health professionals are also becoming enmeshed in legal proceedings. He says that physicians have gone far beyond their realm of expertise to become key decision-makers in matters of child custody, access to performance-enhancing drugs and employment discrimination. He also examines how doctors are being used as political weapons in debates over obesity, abortion, homosexuality, assisted suicide and capital punishment.

Bloche describes how doctors were called upon after 9/11 to use their medical skills and knowledge for national security purposes. Based on interviews with former CIA and military officials, some of whom haven’t spoken publicly until now, he exposes how our government developed a scientifically based strategy to devise interrogation tactics that bordered on torture, and analyzes the important role doctors played in efforts to justify these methods.

Bloche contends that the time has come for complete candor and honest debate about the difficult choices and ethical dilemmas we face as medicine’s place in the public realm continues to grow. He explores alternatives for resolving the conflict between cost and care, and warns that doctors must forge a new compact with patients and with the rest of society if trust in our medical professionals is to be sustained. 

Bloche is a nationally and internationally recognized expert on health law and policy. His writing has appeared in a wide range of venues, including the New England Journal of Medicine, Health Affairs and the Journal of the American Medical Association; leading law reviews; and the New York Times, Washington Post and other media outlets. Bloche has also been a frequent commentator in national broadcast media. He was a health care adviser to President Obama's 2008 campaign, as well as the presidential transition, and he spoke frequently for the campaign as a "surrogate."

Bloche has held teaching and research appointments at the University of Chicago, UCLA and Columbia law schools; as well as the Brookings Institution and the Harvard School of Public Health.  He is a graduate of the law and medical schools at Yale, and he completed a residency in psychiatry at Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center in New York. His awards and honors include a Guggenheim Fellowship and a Robert Wood Johnson Investigator Award in Health Policy Research. Bloche serves on several editorial boards and has advised governments and non-profits in the U.S. and abroad on a wide range of health policy issues.

Bloche recently discussed The Hippocratic Myth on NPR's "Fresh Air." More information about the book is also available on his Facebook page.

 

About Georgetown University Law Center 

Georgetown University Law Center is one of the world's premier law schools. It is pre-eminent in several areas, including constitutional, international, tax and clinical law, and the faculty is among the largest in the nation. Drawing on its Jesuit heritage, it has a strong tradition of public service and is dedicated to the principle that law is but a means, justice is the end. With this principle in mind, Georgetown Law has built an environment that cultivates an exchange of ideas and the pursuit of academic excellence. It brings together an extraordinarily varied group of teachers, scholars and practitioners, as well as an outstanding student body representing more than 60 countries.