The Truth About The Drug Companies

How They Deceive Us And What To Do About It.

In this bold, hard-hitting new book, Dr Marcia Angell exposes the shocking truth of what the pharmaceutical industry has become and argues for essential, long-overdue change.

During her two decades at The New England Journal of Medicine, Dr Angell gained extraordinary insight into the truth about the drug companies. She watched them stray from their original mission of discovering and manufacturing useful drugs and instead become vast marketing machines with unprecedented control over their own fortunes and nearly unlimited influence over medical research, education, and how doctors treat their patients.

By focusing on hugely successful drugs like the first HIV/AIDS medication, Taxol (the bestselling cancer drug in history), and the blockbuster allergy drug Claritin, Dr Angell demonstrates exactly how new products are brought to market.

Drug companies exploit 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. Arguing that the pharmaceutical industry needs to be saved from itself, Dr Angell proposes a program of vital 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 an industry that has spun out of control.