Drug companies are like all corporations, under a system that rewards maximization of profits.
What is said about them (click on link) can be extended to the whole lot of them.
The Truth About Drug Companies: How They Deceive Us and What to Do About It
Marcia Angell, M.D.
Former was Editor in Chief of The New England Journal of Medicine (one of the two most prestigious medical journals
in the U.S.)
and is now a member of the Harvard Medical School. Doctor Angell, in this Polk Award winning
book, regurgitates her anger over the harm done by major drug corporations in their pursuit of profits—an anger I share
and have posted over 20 articles documenting their abuse of the public weal. She, however, being directly involved with
what she calls big pharma has both an inside view and a constant encounter. One who comes to her book with the
spirit of philosophy cannot come away but with new insights into the for-profit system and its corruption of medical science,
the practice of medicine, and its influence upon both the FDA, and the legislative process. You will share her gut reaction
over the incredible amount of harm being done. Moreover, what big pharma has succeeded in accomplishing through government
is a model for how other industries influence those whom we elect to serve us.
More on Marcia at the end
of this chapter from her book.
From Department of Social Medicine,
Harvard University School of Medicine at http://www.hms.harvard.edu/dsm/WorkFiles/html/people/faculty/MarciaAngel.html
Marcia
Angell, M. D., is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School. She stepped down as Editor-in-Chief of the New England Journal of Medicine on June
30, 2000. A graduate of Boston
University School of Medicine, she trained in both internal medicine and anatomic pathology and is a board-certified pathologist.
She joined the editorial staff of the New England Journal of Medicine in 1979, became Executive Editor in 1988, and Editor-in-Chief
in 1999.
Dr. Angell writes frequently
in professional journals and the popular media on a wide range of topics, particularly medical ethics, health policy, the
nature of medical evidence, the interface of medicine and the law, and care at the end of life. Her critically acclaimed book,
Science on Trial: The Clash of Medical Evidence and the Law in the Breast Implant Case, was published in June, 1996, by W.
W. Norton & Company. In addition, Dr. Angell is co-author, with Dr. Stanley Robbins and, later, Dr. Vinay Kumar, of the
first three editions of the textbook, Basic Pathology. She also wrote chapters in several books dealing with ethical issues.
Dr.
Angell is a member of the Association of American Physicians, the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of the Sciences, the Alpha Omega Alpha National Honor Medical
Society, and is a Master of the American College of Physicians. In 1997, Time magazine named Marcia Angell one
of the 25 most influential Americans.
