title: The public voice and the nation's health. Notes from your faithful but beleaguered participant observer at the battlefront.
abstract: A professional layman speculates on the role of public voice in medical care--on ways of making organizations responsive to the public's wishes. Research conducted as a participant observer in the functioning of human subjects committees, hospital trustees, and a government regulatory body reveals the public interest to be no match for the special interest. Unusual proposals are offered to improve the public's control mechanisms; the marketplace and the polling place may yet serve well.
mesh_terms: D003256:Community Participation; D003255:Consumer Organizations; D003362:Cost-Benefit Analysis; D003695:Delivery of Health Care; D005161:Facility Regulation and Control; D006075:Governing Board; D006076:Government; D006805:Human Experimentation; D006801:Humans; D011367:Professional Staff Committees; D011639:Public Opinion; D012107:Research Design; D013514:Surgical Procedures, Operative / Q000191:economics; D014481:United States