What the Drug Companies Don’t want you to Know!

A recent book I read was by a former New England Journal of Medicine Editor, Dr M Angel. The book The Truth About the Drug Companies is worth a read if you want to get even more upset about drug prices. She lays out how many of the arguments about why drug prices are so high are false. She shows how in multiple cases drug companies have taken research that was bought and paid for by tax payer money at the NIH and used it for big profits. We all know about how America pays for cheaper drugs to be subsidized in Canada and Mexico. She also lays out the case how many of the medical meetings and journals are sponsored by big Pharma. I would agree with this assessment  although what bothers me is how organized medicine is on the average doctors case about taking a free ball point pen here and there while they run their national meetings and journals on billion dollar sponsorship from Pharma. I would tell them to take the log out of their eye before they take the splinter out of mine. She brings out the monster cost of $12 billion on DTC direct to consumer advertising which is banned in all developed countries except New Zealand. I usually find, patients asking for drugs from TV ads are misinformed and don’t need the high priced spread. She also makes an excellent point about how new drugs are tested against placebo, not whether they are better than a current older competitor drug. A recent study showed old fashion diuretics were as good as the high priced ACE inhibitors. Other conflicts of interest include phase 4 studies that basically pay doctors to enroll patients in outpatient studies to get them to prescribe a new high priced drug. I have NEVER  done this type of fake research on my patients. Read this book carefully, its contents may upset your mental health.