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The Truth About the Drug Companies: How They Deceive Us and What to Do About It

marcia angell

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Unabridged Book on CDs - 6 CDS

null pages, Audio CD

First published January 1,2004

This edition

Format
null pages, Audio CD
Published
January 1, 2004 by Books on Tape
ISBN
9781415904558
ASIN
1415904553
Language
English

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About the author

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marcia angell

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Community Reviews

Rating(3.9 / 5.0, 98 votes)
5 stars
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98 reviews All reviews
Profile Image for Kimberly .
jc9622
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 25,2025
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I either bought a copy of this for my Dad and read it after him, or he gave me his copy. I read it during law school, sometime in either 2005 or 2006. The rise of "me too" drugs and how Big Pharma has essentially captured the patent office are stories from this book that are still prominent in my mind.
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MissHades
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 25,2025
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If 14 years as editor of the number one medical journal in the world isn't enough to help you see what pharma are up to then I don't know what will... A book perhaps that could be on the conspiracy theorists shelf yet doesn't make it there due to the authors extensive experience with dealing with big pharma...
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ichigopan
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 25,2025
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Kind of boring for me. It got very much on listing names of companies. You basically get the jist of the book in the introduction. The government and the pharmaceutical companies suck.
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Sapphire-san
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 25,2025
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Wow, she rant... a lot about the drug company. But overall, it give you some insight about drug industry. The best chapter is the last one where she provide solutions. Do I think these solutions work? Maybe, but just don't see change will come any time soon.
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Lozane
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 25,2025
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This book by a doctor and former editor of the New England Journal of Medicine is a serious indictment of the pharmaceutical industry, particularly as it operates in the US. Although I was aware of much of the information, she lays it all out with detailed documentation.

While most basic research is conducted by the NIH and/or universities, drug companies continue to excuse their exorbitant price-gouging on the costs of "research and development". While their big expenditures are actually direct to consumer marketing and marketing masquerading as "education".
The other big expense is for legal fees - to seek ever-longer patent rights, and lobbying. They have the FDA, congress and all the rest of us in their pockets. In the meantime, while they tout their creativity and innovation, most of the new drugs they promote are new versions of old drugs, some with really minimal changes and no advantage. (Prozac was colored pink and given a new name for marketing as a drug for pre-menstrual tension!) Also because they have control over their drug trials, much of the data is skewed in favor of newer, more expensive ones they want to patent.

They also do not have any interest in developing drugs for diseases that affect fewer than 200,000 people or those which affect people in countries that cannot afford their gargantuan markups.
It is really sickening! The only way to beat this sickness is to use as few medications as possible, only when absolutely necessary, in generic form, and buy from Canada or overseas when possible.
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eimon_
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 25,2025
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The title should be: How the US empowers the Pharma Industry to exploit its citizens. Several facts in the book are true - pharma is driven by shareholder profits, profit margins are ridiculously high, pricing in US even more so, abusing loopholes to extend patent life, etc. However, main frustration is how the pharma, healthcare, doctors' education and reimbursement schemes have evolved for the worse in the US (1980-2004) due to laws and reforms or lack of it thereof. The book is 2 decades old and few things have changed (tighter regulation around clinical trials) but many problems remain like high pricing.
The book has valid points but I found it just okay because the title was misleading and my expectations were different.
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