The Truth About the Drug Companies: How They Deceive Us and What to Do About It
The Truth About the Drug Companies: How They Deceive Us and What to Do About It Books
- ISBN13: 9780375760945
- Shape up: NEW
- Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
Product Description
During her two decades at The New England Journal of Medicine, Dr. Marcia Angell had a front-row seat on the appalling spectacle of the pharmaceutical industry. She watched drug companies stray from their original mission of learning and manufacturing helpful drugs and instead become vast marketing machines with unprecedented control over their own fortunes. She saw them gain near limitless influence over medical research, education, and how doctors do their jobs. She sympathized as the American broadcast, particularly the elderly, struggled and increasingly failed to meet spiraling prescription drug prices. Now, in this bold, hard-hitting new book, Dr. Angell exposes the shocking truth of what the pharmaceutical industry has become–and argues for essential, long-overdue exchange.
Now Americans spend a staggering $200 billion each year on prescription drugs. As Dr. Angell powerfully demonstrates, claims that high drug prices are necessary to fund research and development are unfounded: The truth is that drug companies funnel the bulk of their resources into the marketing of products of dubious benefit. Meanwhile, as profits soar, the companies brazenly use their wealth and power to push their agenda through Congress, the FDA, and academic medical centers.
Zeroing in on hugely successful drugs like AZT (the first drug to handle HIV/AIDS), Taxol (the best-selling cancer drug in history), and the blockbuster allergy drug Claritin, Dr. Angell demonstrates just so how new products are brought to market. Drug companies, she shows, routinely rely on publicly funded institutions for their basic research; they rig clinical trials to make their products look better than they are; and they use their legions of lawyers to stretch out government-contracted exclusive marketing rights for years. They also flood the market with copycat drugs that cost a lot more than the drugs they mimic but are no more effective.
The American pharmaceutical industry needs to be saved, mainly from itself, and Dr. Angell proposes a program of vital reforms, which includes restoring impartiality to clinical research and severing the ties between drug companies and medical education. Written with fierce passion and substantiated with in-depth research, The Truth About the Drug Companies is a searing indictment of an industry that has spun out of control.
From the Hardcover edition.Amazon.com Review
Many Americans have wondered why prescription drugs have become so pricey even as advertising for those drugs seems to grow exponentially. Former New England Journal of Medicine Editor Marcia Angell has some answers. The pharmaceutical industry, according to Angell, is fraught with corruption and doing a disservice to customers, the federal government, and to the medical establishment itself. In The Truth About the Drug Companies, Angell clarifies how a huge part of the revenue generated by “Huge Pharma” goes not into research and development but into aggressive marketing campaigns to sell their product. She describes how, even though the drug companies claim that it expenditure them an average of 802 million dollars per drug to develop new medicines, that figure is obscenely inflated since it factors in marketing as well as expected interest the company would have received had they invested the money in the open market. Meanwhile, Angell says, most of the R & D work is done by colleges and universities funded by the government. There are also problems with the drugs themselves, Angell indicates, since a majority are “me-too drugs”, slightly bespoke versions of existing products which meant to address concerns of consumers most likely to spend money on pharmaceuticals. Thus, the market is filled with remarkably similar drugs to handle depression and high cholesterol even as potentially life-saving medicines for diseases afflicting third-world countries are discontinued because they aren’t profitable. In the books most damning passage, Angell tells of the high-priced junkets offered to doctors, ostensibly offered as educational opportunities that seem to constitute small more than bribes. The prognosis for reform is a grim one, Angell indicates, due to the massive cash reserves and lobbying efforts of “Huge Pharma.” Indeed, that lobby was hard at work trying to discredit her claims immediately upon the book’s publication. But for anyone who’s paid a pharmacy bill, The Truth About the Drug Companies is a fascinating read. –John Moe
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Both pharma and doctors are responsible for cost effective care of patients and both should be held to that responsibility.
Rating: 1 / 5
A lack of accuracy and depth make the subtitle of the book incredibly misleading. The truth is not to be found in its pages. A better understanding of business theory would be helpful for an author suggesting ways to “reform” a business.
Rating: 1 / 5
Let’s pick one topic in this book, just to illustrate the lies that is being spread regarding the pharma industry ….
Paraphrasing: Most drugs come from the Universities and tax subsidized government programs and very small inovation comes from the industry itself.
We can question this two ways …. the first way is by use of some common sense. Who do you folks reckon are paid higher, scientists in the Unis and government programs, or scientists in the industry? Who do you reckon is better equiped, ie. who has better laboratory toys, the Univeristies/government programs or the Industry?
If the industries have smarter scientists and better lab equipment, judgment tells you the industry must yield better drugs, no? Besides, when was the last time anything run by the government was really productive and well-organized? Have you been to the DMV lately? Come on!
Marcia saying the Universities and the NIH are more innovative in developing drugs than the Pharma Industry is like saying (using sports analogy) Minor League baseball is better than the MLB. Which players do you reckon are paid more? Common sense my friends.
That’s using plain ancient judgment.
Now the second way, is to really do some research. Go down the list of drugs and find out where they were exposed. But based on common sense, do we really need to do that?
Just one of the many LIES this book is spreading. Angell has an agenda and is merely profitting from the emotional come forth of being unable to afford medicines.
The come forth is much more complex than simply BASHING the drug industry.
Some things to keep in mind before you join the bashing:
1. Tomorrow’s cures (despite what Marcia thinks) will not be appearance from academia, it will come from the Drug Industry. Our children’s future are depending on the health of this industry.
2. The drug industry is one the last remaining industries America has. Haven’t you noticed, everything is made in Plates. Keep up the drug bashing and soon your medicines will be appearance from India.
3. Why would anyone pay for an unproven, unreliable herbal remedy but will question the value of a drug? Is it really drugs or food or is it more like Casino money or drugs?
4. What would the world be today, if not for the thousands of pharmaceutical professionals who brings us these cures?
SO BEFORE YOU JOIN THE BASHING – Reckon first. Not emotionally – logically!
Rating: 1 / 5
Hey, the people who work in huge pharma are not evil money sucking
vampires. In fact we feel very fortunate to be in jobs where we get to help people.
I don’t reckon anyone would willing place out drugs they know are going to harm people and if they do they should be tried and jailed if guilty.
Americans live for a long time, people from other countries come to our hospitals and our doctors to get treatment and medicine. We ship AIDS drugs and money to Africa and other third world countries. Yet the press wants to vilify the drug industry because it wants to make as much profit as possible?!? Last time I checked we lived in a Republic founded on the thoughts of democracy and capitalism with a subtle mix of FDR socialism b/c as Americans we help our neighbors. But also sometimes as Americans we make our neighbors pay for the help.
Rating: 2 / 5
Those evil drug corporations who save lives. Lets pretend there is no capitalism, fix drug prices, reimport and really judge in some way this magically won’t affect drug companies research and development expenditures. Heaven forbid you or someone you know has a serious disease and is coming up for a cure, support this kind of thought and you’ll keep on coming up. Factually the book is wanting, most top drugs are not developed through broadcast support NOT. There’s also the ludicrous propsosition that FDA approval should take LONGER than it already does, that drugs should be tested hostile to existing drugs instead of placebos, makes no sense since you want the largest arsenal of treatments hostile to a certain shape up
Rating: 1 / 5