Check out this new book!! - The Truth About the Drug Companies

[Guest guest]

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 discovering and

manufacturing useful drugs and instead become vast marketing machines with

unprecedented control over their own fortunes. She saw them gain nearly

limitless influence over medical research, education, and how doctors do their

jobs. She sympathized as the American public, 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 change.

 

Currently 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 treat

HIV/AIDS), Taxol (the best-selling cancer drug in history), and the blockbuster

allergy drug Claritin, Dr. Angell demonstrates exactly 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-granted 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.

 

http://www.randomhouse.com/catalog/display.pperl?isbn=9780375508462

& #65279;

 

 

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Matthew Shock