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Podcast: New Books in Medicine
Episode: Jeremy Snyder, "Exploiting Hope: How the Promise of New Medical Interventions Sustains Us--and Makes Us Vulnerable" (Oxford UP, 2020)
Description: We often hear stories of people in terrible and seemingly intractable situations who are preyed upon by someone offering promises of help. Frequently these cases are condemned in terms of "exploiting hope." These accusations are made in a range of contexts: human smuggling, employment relationships, unproven medical 'cures.' We hear this concept so often and in so many contexts that, with all its heavy lifting in public discourse, its actual meaning tends to lose focus. Despite its common use, it can be hard to understand precisely what is wrong about exploiting hope what can accurately be captured under th...