“sickening” is authored by John Abramson (MD, MSc). Abramson has been on the faculty of Harvard Medical School for 25 years. He has been a family physician for 22 years and has acted as an expert witness in litigation against various pharmaceutical companies. He has written numerous academic articles and a book “Overdo$ed America: TheContinue reading “RKS Book Review: “sickening: How Big Pharma Broke American Health Care and How We Can Repair It” by John Abramson, MD, MSc”
Tag Archives: John Abramson
RKS Health: Drug Company Reps and Commercial Propaganda
“Drug reps exploit doctors’ sense of reciprocal obligation by leaving small gifts and buying meals, which are accepted by 70% of practicing physicians each year. Even a single meal worth no more than twenty dollars provided by a drug company significantly increases doctors’ prescribing of brand-name drugs that are no more effective than drugs ofContinue reading “RKS Health: Drug Company Reps and Commercial Propaganda”
RKS Health: Beware of Drug Companies Clinical Trials!
“First, commercially sponsored clinical trials report favourable conclusions about the sponsor’s drug or device 34 percent more frequently than non-commercially funded trials do. Moreover, when the principal investigator of a published clinical trial has financial ties to the manufacturer of the drug being studied-as is the case in two-thirds of published clinical trials-the odds areContinue reading “RKS Health: Beware of Drug Companies Clinical Trials!”
RKS Health: U.S.A. Big Pharma Where Sales and Marketing Trump Research
“In fact, shaping doctors’ beliefs has become the drug companies’ primary job. To this end, the majority of the largest drug companies spend twice as much on sales and marketing as they do on research and development of the drugs themselves. And a quarter of those spend ten times as much on sales and marketing.Continue reading “RKS Health: U.S.A. Big Pharma Where Sales and Marketing Trump Research”
RKS Health; Skyrocketing Health Costs in the United States and Decreasing Healthy Life Expectancy
“Back in 1980, the United States spent 8.2% of GDP on health-care, virtually the same as the second highest spending country (Germany at 8.1 percent) and just 1.7 percent above the average of ten comparable countries. But as discussed in the introduction, by 2019 American health-care spending had skyrocketed to 17.7 percent of US GDP.Continue reading “RKS Health; Skyrocketing Health Costs in the United States and Decreasing Healthy Life Expectancy”
RKS Health: The Central Strategy of Big Pharma
“Between 1991 and 2017, drug companies paid more than $38 billion in fines and settlements to federal and state governments: many of those companies-including Merck pleaded guilty to having misled doctors and the public about drug safety and efficacy. (GlaxoSmith Kline led the pack with $7.9 billion in financial penalties). Even so that seemingly enormousContinue reading “RKS Health: The Central Strategy of Big Pharma”
RKS Health: Misleading Physicians to Increase Sales
“The Kaiser v. Pfizer trial provided two key lessons about drug company marketing: First, because drug companies fund most of the research about their drugs and control the resulting data, they can (and do) mislead physicians in order to increase sales. And, second, under our current system, it is more profitable for large pharmaceutical companiesContinue reading “RKS Health: Misleading Physicians to Increase Sales”
RKS Health: Should the Real Goal to be Lower Cholesterol?
“Americans and their health care providers must remember that the real goal is not to have the lowest cholesterol level but to have the lowest risk of heart disease and stroke. Had the guidelines Jane’s doctor followed so scrupulously with regard to statin therapy first called for an in-depth program to help Jane overcome herContinue reading “RKS Health: Should the Real Goal to be Lower Cholesterol?”
RKS Health: Deadly Profit Seeking
“Sadly, those priorities did not include the safety of Stacey Palmer or all the other tens of thousands of Americans who had suffered cardiovascular complications as a result of taking Vioxx. Many of those injuries and deaths could have been prevented if the New England Journal of Medicine had corrected its erroneous article as soonContinue reading “RKS Health: Deadly Profit Seeking”
Passage of the Day: “Sickening: How Big Pharma Broke American Health Care and How We Can Repair It”
“Obviously, there is no single source of the dysfunction in our health-care system, but the most powerful force driving this toxic combination of poor health care and high costs is Big Pharma’s influence on American medical care. And the reason the pharmaceutical industry has been able to achieve this” tail wags dog” position is thatContinue reading “Passage of the Day: “Sickening: How Big Pharma Broke American Health Care and How We Can Repair It””
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