The Truth about Drug Companies
by Marcia Angell · first published 2004
27% recommend55% neutral18% critical
Angell watched drug companies stray from their 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 nearly limitless influence over medical research, education, and how doctors do their jobs. She sympathized as the American public, particularly the elderly, struggled and increasingly failed to meet spiraling prescription drug prices.
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…raw data is on clinicaltrials.gov which it almost never is. There are again a number of books that explain why this is, I personally like both Overdosed America (again) and also Marcia Angell's book The Truth About Drug Companies. I'm sure Ben Goldacre's new book probably covers the same stuff though. "eep in mind that, as with all drugs, both are dose-dependent and have unpleasant side-effects when taken in combination with…
on “The $2.7 Trillion Medical Bill” ↗…guarantee of anything. Just because something makes sense on paper doesn't mean that it's actually true. There are a number of books about the issues with drug trials... Bad Pharma by Ben Goldacre, The Truth About Drug Companies by Marcia Angell, Overdosed America, etc. All of these books cover largely different issues, so imho it's worth reading them all.
on “The Placebo Effect Doesn’t Apply Just to Pills” ↗…the public interest, drug discovery and testing ought to occur in academia. The pharmaceutical industry should play no role in that, and should merely manufacture approved drugs. Edit: Please see The Truth About Drug Companies, by Marcia Angell, M.D., formerly an editor of the New England Journal of Medicine.
on “The FDA buries evidence of fraud in medical trials. My students and I dug it up” ↗…half the problems you could get rid of just by cleaning up all the corruption in pharma and the FDA. The two books I've read that both have some pretty good stats and recommendations on this are: The Truth About Drug Companies by Marcia Angell Overdosed America by John Abramson The problems are way too numerous to list, but they're extremely important. The second thing that needs to change is that we need more data about…
on “How to stop hospitals from killing us” ↗…brokenness. I read this book, and found it quite eye opening. I haven't checked up on everything that I read about, but the things I did look into were consistent with the claims... http://www.amazon.com/Truth-About-Drug-Companies-Deceive/dp/...
on “2009's Top Threats To Science In Medicine” ↗The former head editor of NEJM wrote a book called The Truth About Drug Companies that describes it in good detail. Also the book The Emperors New Drugs and the book Overdosed America. The first is about phase 4 trials, the other books cover more general issues with phase 1-3 trials…
on “It’s time all clinical trial results are reported” ↗…spending, do you withdraw your assertion? Given the aforementioned lack of sources in this thread I somehow doubt it. Ah: I found a review/summary of the book which originally sparked this comment. It's The Truth About the Drug Companies, and is by Marcia Angell, the first female editor of the New England Journal of Medicine. The review is available at: http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2004/jul/15/the-tru... More: http://www.slate.com/articles/business/the_customer/2011/03/...
on “India Supreme Court rejects Novartis' right to patent new version of cancer drug” ↗…relying mostly on British examples." At least judging from this example, the majority of his book is sourced from two earlier books that were written about the FDA and the American drug system: The Truth About Drug Companies by Marcia Angell Overdosed America by Jonathan Abrams Those were published in 2004 and 2005, so there are a few studies published since then on the influence of pharma funding on trial outcomes, but…
on “Ben Goldacre: Here’s the foreword to my new book, Bad Pharma” ↗I mean Ben Goldacre's book itself is a pretty good example of people being irrational. He's mostly just covering the same ground as Marcia Angell's earlier book The Truth About Drug Companies, which "skeptics" hated. But when Goldacre published his book the same folks decided they loved it, presumably because it was written by a man. I mean don't get me wrong, there's enough difference between…
on “Surgery, the Ultimate Placebo” ↗The Truth About the Drug Companies by Marcia Angell was read and discussed. The fact that Marcia Angell's book was required reading pretty much tells you everything you need to know about the clinic's culture. Angell's book is a terribly…
on “Lessons Learned from a Pharma-Free Practice Transformation” ↗The Truth About Drug Companies by Marcia Angell No offense, but Marcia Angell has a tenuous grasp in terms of knowledge of the pharmaceutical industry. I would take her opinions with a grain of salt.[1] [1]http://www.forbes.com/sites/johnlamattina/2012/12/14/marcia-...
on “The Placebo Effect Doesn’t Apply Just to Pills” ↗Timely. I'm reading "The Truth About the Drug Companies" by Marcia Angell. Per Wikipedia, Dr. Angell is "the first woman to serve as editor-in-chief of the New England Journal of Medicine. She is currently a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Global Health…
on “‘Pharmacy of the developing world’ under attack from the US, EU, Japan” ↗Two things to be said about this argument. One: Martha Angell says it's just a line of propaganda. From a review at http://www.amazon.com/Truth-About-Drug-Companies-Deceive/dp/... "In The Truth About the Drug Companies, [former editor of the New England Journal of Medicine] Angell explains how a huge portion of the revenue generated by 'Big Pharma' goes not into…
on “Why We Must Ration Health Care” ↗:) The Truth About the Drug Companies by Marcia Angell (Random House, 2004) http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJM200410073511522
on “Pharma Execs Arrested Over Fentanyl Rackateering” ↗…Angell wrote: > Second, there’s good evidence that drug company involvement biases research in ways that are not always obvious, often by suppressing negative results. And as I recall, her 2005 book The Truth About the Drug Companies discussed research which showed that the geographic distribution of stent usage correlated with the geographic distribution of capacity to do stents. With evidence, as I recall, that facilities basically…
on “Heart doctors 'held back stent death data'” ↗