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    Malcolm Gladwell to write TV medical drama

    Malcolm Gladwell to write TV medical drama

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    Good thing he's an expert

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    Everyone’s favorite pop sociologist has just been contracted to pen a TV show: as New York Magazine reports, Malcolm Gladwell will be co-writing The Cure, an American medical thriller starring a "young, impulsive" black neurologist. Gladwell, whose five books about behavioral science and psychology have sold more than 4.5 million copies worldwide, will be taking point on the story, which involves the main character "taking the law into her own hands" as she fights to cure some sort of ghastly disease.

    An act of individual heroics outside the system is an obvious hook for Gladwell, who recently explained to an interviewer at Forbes that many of Americans’ health care woes could be solved if patients lived healthier lives rather than relying on what he considers an at times over-regulated health care industry.

    The medical industry is an obvious hook for gladwell

    The author and celebrity New Yorker columnist has also, for many years, maintained close ties to the world he’ll be writing about — in 2004, he posted a 6,492-word disclosure statement to his website in which he described the conflict of interest at play as he simultaneously wrote about the pharmaceutical industry and received tens of thousands of dollars from health care companies as payment for speaking engagements.

    One would imagine this all this experience will be useful as background for the Cure script. It may help the show see a full season, unlike his previous 2012 Cold War drama, The Missionary.

    Gladwell will be joined by Glenn Gordon Caron, creator of the paranormal thriller Medium; the show will air on Fox. As Deadline points out, The Cure is the third network television medical drama pilot ordered this season — perhaps America’s fervor for hospital procedurals has reached its tipping point.