Healthy Skepticism Library item: 19520

Warning: This library includes all items relevant to health product marketing that we are aware of regardless of quality. Often we do not agree with all or part of the contents.

Publication type: Magazine

Relman AS, Angell M
America's Other Drug Problem: How the drug industry distorts medicine and politics.
The New Republic 2002 Dec 16
www.commercialalert.org/relmanangell.pdf

Full text:

The american health care
system cannot live without the
pharmaceutical industry, but
it may not be able to live with
it either, unless the industry
is greatly reformed. For better and for
worse, this enormous and hugely profitable
enterprise has become a dominating
presence in American life. It uses its great
wealth and influence to ensure favorable
government policies. It has also, with the
acquiescence of a medical profession addicted
to drug company largesse, assumed
a role in directing medical treatment, clinical
research, and physician education that
is totally inappropriate for a profit-driven
industry. Like most other for-profit corporations,
drug companies are impelled
primarily by the financial aspirations of
their investors and executives. This incentive
may serve useful social purposes in the
distribution of ordinary goods in most
markets, but prescription drugs are not
like ordinary goods, and the market for
drugs is not like other markets. The misconception
that drugs and their market
are like other goods and markets explains
most of the serious problems with the
pharmaceutical industry today.