Book Review: Corporate Crime in the Pharmaceutical Industry
| Author | Andrew Hopkins |
| DOI | 10.1177/000486588401700313 |
| Published date | 01 September 1984 |
| Date | 01 September 1984 |
| Subject Matter | Book Reviews |
190
BOOK
REVIEWS (1984) 17
ANZJ
Crim
actions of the powerful which "are regarded by most Americans [the book reads as
if Americans are the only audience] as unethical or immoral".
This can be justifiably criticized as a sloppy definition since the authors are in no
position to poll Americans for each kind of misconduct they survey. Inevitably,
selections of elite deviance reflect the political preferences of the authors, who are
socialists. At the same time, many conservative readers will have little difficulty in
accepting the impropriety of activities such as political corruption, fomenting the
violent overthrow of democratically elected governments,
CIA
mail-opening
campaigns and the like.
Topics covered in the book include monopolization, price fixing and other
anti-trust offences, price gouging, deceptive advertising, fraud, the use of organized
criminals by corporations and the state, the manufacture and dumping of unsafe
consumer products, human rights violations particularly by multinational
corporations and the military-industrial complex, and occupational health and
safety malpractices. The book is an invaluable resource as it piles case study upon
case study in all of these areas. In this regard, the book would certainly be a useful
teaching aid to courses in white-collar crime and deviance.
The final chapter puts forward the authors' solutions to the problems of elite
deviance which, in a word, amount to socialism (of a participatory, democratic
kind). We are told that "The economy must be changed so that people, rather than
profit, are paramount". While the case is well argued, there is a need to consider
the implications of the widespread elite deviance in not-for-profit organizations
which is documented in the book. There is also a need to come to grips with the
phenomenon of corporate crime motivated by other than financial gain in
profit-making companies. Corporate crime does often arise from internal
bureaucratic empire building within companies or from desires for personal
aggrandisement which contribute nothing to corporate profit.
While Simon and Eitzen argue, correctly I think, for a society with a more equal
distribution of wealth and power as a route to reducing elite deviance, they ignore
counter-propositions bound to be put by conservatives. The latter contend that
crimes of the powerful will proliferate in a society which denies the privileged what
they see as just reward for their enormous contribution to society. The final chapter
would have been strengthened by incorporation of rebuttals for such contentions
and by arguing more explicit links between the nature of the phenomenon as
revealed in the first six chapters and the solutions of the final chapter.
Notwithstanding these gaps, Elite Deviance is an excellent and absorbing book.
Who would dare reject its message that crimes of the powerful arise from a
breakdown of accounability in complex capitalist societies?
JOHN
BRAITHWAITE
Canberra
Corporate Crime in the Pharmaceutical Industry, John Braithwaite, RKP (1984)
$49.50.
During World War II a well known drug company "bought" women from Nazi
concentration camps like cattle, at so much a head. They were used for drug testing
and most died in the process. Braithwaite's book documents how drug companies
today exhibit the same horrifying disregard for human life. The results of drug
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