ABSTRACT
The rhetoric of consumerism is couched in terms of consumers’ rights. There are, perhaps, three principal areas on which the attention of those advancing the claims of the consumer may focus. The first is the promotion of health. Obviously, consumerism here is very wide-ranging. Occasionally, individuals, or groups, have acted as champions of certain sections of the community, or of all of us. The various organizations concerned with the elderly or the poor or with handicapped children serve as good examples. The second area in which consumerism may have some impact is that of medical research. The third area in which consumerism has a role to play is the much more specific and more important one of the actual day-to-day practice of medicine. The most obvious approach is professional self-regulation. This is an odd, paternalistic kind of consumerism, in which the professional presumes to be the sympathetic advocate of the consumers’ interests.
