Satire is a powerful literary device, just think of works by authors such as Jonathan Swift and Kurt Vonnegut.Medicine is not immune to exposure by satire.
Here is a satirical essay published in BMJ titled Harlot PLC: an amalgamation of the world's two oldest professions. The authors cleverly expose the dark side of medicine as a business by way of creating a fictitious medical company, HARLOT plc, that will ''maximize the profits of dodgy drugs and devices.''
Why is this important? Because in the development of drugs and technologies, financial motives and greed result in study designs, statistical methods and hidden conflicts of interest that require strategies for How to Achieve positive Results without actually Lying to Overcome the Truth (HARLOT).
Insightful and worth reading.
