Exposé : Pharmaceutical industry

2005-11-06

Richard Moore

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http://www.wanttoknow.info/051106marciaangell

Affecting Your Health: Renowned MD Exposes Major Drug Company Cover-up 

    "So staggeringly profitable is the drug industry that in
    2002 the combined profits for the top 10 drug companies in
    the Fortune 500 were greater than those of all the other
    490 companies combined."
    -- Review of landmark book by Marcia Angell, MD in Boston
    Globe , 10/5/04

November 6, 2005 
Dear friends, 

As the former editor in chief of one of the world's most
prestigious medical journals, The New England Journal of
Medicine , Marcia Angell, M.D. is eminently qualified to
expose disturbing secrets of the highly profitable
pharmaceutical industry which affect your health. The
esteemed Dr. Angell has now written a revealing book
titled The Truth About the Drug Companies, which clearly
depicts how greed and secrecy have compromised both your
health and budget, and the health and budget of our nation
and world. This landmark book received the following rave
reviews:

Washington Post : "Always authoritative...[this book]
delivers the message-that drug-company money and power is
corrupting American medicine-in a convincing, no-nonsense
manner."

Boston Globe : "A sober, clear-eyed attack on the excesses
of drug company power...a lucid, persuasive, and highly
important book."

New York Times : "A scorching indictment of drug companies
and their research and business practices...tough,
persuasive and troubling."

Providing the hard evidence backed up with hundreds of
excellent footnotes and empowering suggestions on what we
can do, Dr. Angell's book is a must read for all who care
about the future of our health. Below are a few key quotes
from a summary of this eye-opening book in the New York
Review of Books :

"[In 2002] the combined profits for the ten drug companies
in the Fortune 500 were more than the profits for all the
other 490 businesses put together. Over the past two
decades the pharmaceutical industry has moved very far
from its original high purpose of discovering and
producing useful new drugs. Now primarily a marketing
machine to sell drugs of dubious benefit, this industry
uses its wealth and power to co-opt every institution that
might stand in its way, including the US Congress, the
FDA, academic medical centers, and the medical profession
itself."

"The great majority of 'new' drugs are not new at all but
merely variations of older drugs already on the market.
These are called 'me-too' drugs. The idea is to grab a
share of an established, lucrative market by producing
something very similar to a top-selling drug. As Dr.
Sharon Levine, associate executive director of the Kaiser
Permanente Medical Group, put it: 'If I'm a manufacturer
and I can change one molecule and get another twenty years
of patent rights, and convince physicians to prescribe and
consumers to demand the next form of Prilosec just as my
patent expires, then why would I be spending money on a
lot less certain endeavor, which is looking for brand-new
drugs?'"

"Of the 78 drugs approved by the FDA in 2002, only 17
contained new active ingredients, and only seven of these
were classified by the FDA as improvements over older
drugs. The other 71 drugs approved that year were
variations of old drugs or deemed no better than drugs
already on the market. In other words, they were me-too
drugs."

"The Medicare prescription drug benefit enacted in 2003,
and scheduled to go into effect in 2006, promises a
windfall for big pharma since it forbids the government
from negotiating prices. The immediate jump in
pharmaceutical stock prices after the bill passed
indicated that the industry and investors were well aware
of the windfall."

"Drug companies have the largest lobby in Washington, and
they give copiously to political campaigns. Legislators
are now so beholden to the pharmaceutical industry that it
will be exceedingly difficult to break its lock on them.
But the one thing legislators need more than campaign
contributions is votes. That is why citizens should know
what is really going on. Contrary to the industry's public
relations, they don't get what they pay for. The fact is
that this industry is taking us for a ride, and there will
be no real reform without an aroused and determined public
to make it happen."

For a concise two-page review of Dr. Angell's The Truth
About the Drug Companies , see
http://www.WantToKnow.info/healthcoverup  Or explore our
information-packed ten-page summary at
http://www.WantToKnow.info/truthaboutdrugcompanies which
includes footnotes with links. For an abundance of other
reliable resources on the health cover-up, visit our
Health Information Center . If the facts in these
documents were reported in headline news where they
belong, caring citizens would be astounded and demand to
know more. This has not happened, which is why we feel
compelled to provide them here.

To understand more about the impact of all this, go to
http://www.WantToKnow.info  The entire website is
dedicated both to providing a concise, reliable
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With best wishes, 
Fred Burks for the WantToKnow.info Team 
Former language interpreter for Presidents Bush and
Clinton

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