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Elizabeth Chamblee Burch on 'The Pain Brokers'

Peter Frey/Atria/One Signal Publishers
Elizabeth Chamblee Burch and book cover

On this week's 51%, we speak with Elizabeth Chamblee Burch, a professor at the University of Georgia School of Law, about her new book The Pain Brokers. Burch is a scholar of mass torts, the large civil lawsuits typically filed as a result of harmful products and recalls. Mass torts are meant to be an efficient way to provide relief to a large number of victims, but for thousands of women with pelvic mesh, Burch says that was not the case. The Pain Brokers investigates a complex scheme of call centers, doctors, and lawyers who Burch says preyed on pelvic mesh patients and used them to make millions off mass torts.

Guest: Elizabeth Chamblee Burch, Fuller E. Callaway Chair of Law at the University of Georgia School of Law, and author of The Pain Brokers: How Con Men, Call Centers, and Rogue Doctors Fuel America's Lawsuit Factory

51% is a national production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio in Albany, New York. Jesse King is our producer and host. Our associate producer is Madeleine Reynolds, and our theme is "Lolita" by the Albany-based artist Girl Blue. 

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Jesse King is the host of WAMC's national program on women's issues, "51%," and the station's former Hudson Valley bureau chief. She has also produced episodes of the WAMC podcast "A New York Minute In History."
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