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During her 2 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 other 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 almost limitless influence over medical research, education, and exactly 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 the actual pharmaceutical industry has become–and argues for essential, long-overdue change.
Currently Americans spend an astounding $200 billion every year on prescription medications. As Dr. Angell powerfully demonstrates, claims that high drug prices are essential to fund research and development are unfounded: The truth is that drug companies funnel the majority of their resources in to the marketing of products of dubious benefit. Meanwhile, as profits soar, the firms brazenly use their wealth and capacity to push their agenda through Congress, the FDA, and academic medical centers.
Zeroing in on hugely successful drugs like AZT (the first drug to take care of HIV/AIDS), Taxol (the best-selling cancer drug in history), and the blockbuster allergy drug Claritin, Dr. Angell demonstrates exactly how services are taken to market. Drug companies, she shows, routinely rely on publicly funded institutions because of 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. In addition they flood the market with copycat drugs that cost far more than the drugs they mimic but are forget about effective.
The American pharmaceutical industry must be saved, mainly from itself, and Dr. Angell proposes a program of essential reforms, which include 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 a business that has spun out of control.
