The Truth About the Drug Companies, Marcia Angell
The Truth About the Drug Companies, Marcia Angell
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The Truth About the Drug Companies
How They Deceive Us and What to Do About It

Author: Marcia Angell

Narrator: Kate Reading

Unabridged: 7 hr 15 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 06/01/2004


Synopsis

During her two decades at The New England Journal of Medicine, Dr. Marcia Angell had a front-row seat on the appalling spectacle of the pharmaceutical industry. She 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. Now, in this bold, hard-hitting new book, Dr. Angell exposes the shocking truth of what the pharmaceutical industry has become–and argues for essential, long-overdue change.

Currently Americans spend a staggering $200 billion each year on prescription drugs. As Dr. Angell powerfully demonstrates, claims that high drug prices are necessary to fund research and development are unfounded: The truth is that drug companies funnel the bulk of their resources into the marketing of products of dubious benefit. Meanwhile, as profits soar, the companies brazenly use their wealth and power to push their agenda through Congress, the FDA, and academic medical centers.

Zeroing in on hugely successful drugs like AZT (the first drug to treat HIV/AIDS), Taxol (the best-selling cancer drug in history), and the blockbuster allergy drug Claritin, Dr. Angell demonstrates exactly how new products are brought to market. Drug companies, she shows, routinely rely on publicly funded institutions for their basic research; they rig clinical trials to make their products look better than they are; and they use their legions of lawyers to stretch out government-granted exclusive marketing rights for years. They also flood the market with copycat drugs that cost a lot more than the drugs they mimic but are no more effective.

The American pharmaceutical industry needs to be saved, mainly from itself, and Dr. Angell proposes a program of vital reforms, which includes restoring impartiality to clinical research and severing the ties between drug companies and medical education. Written with fierce passion and substantiated with in-depth research, The Truth About the Drug Companies is a searing indictment of an industry that has spun out of control.

About The Author

Former editor-in-chief of the New England Journal of Medicine and now a member of Harvard Medical School’s Department of Global Health and Social Medicine, Marcia Angell is a nationally recognized authority in the field of health policy and medical ethics and an outspoken critic of the health care system. Time magazine named her one of the 25 most influential people in America. Dr. Angell is the author of Science on Trial: The Clash of Medical Evidence and the Law in the Breast Implant Case.Kate Reading is the recipient of three AudioFile Earphones Awards, and has narrated everything from Patricia Cornwell to George Eliot. Her favorite BOT recordings include Like Water for ChocolateMiddlemarch, and Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Times series, which she narrated with her husband, Michael Kramer.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Ron on December 03, 2022

This is one fantastically credible book. Written by the former editor in chief of the New England Journal of Medicine, it exposes the Drug Companies for the greedy companies they really are. Written almost 20 years ago you can see that things are worst now by watching the medical TV ads today - whic......more

Goodreads review by Zhijing on July 22, 2020

Nice compilation of facts in pharmaceutical industry in the US. 1) The cost on *marketing and sales* is major (31% of profits); R&D cost is minor. 2) There aren't many new drugs developed; most useful drugs are developed not by drug companies, but, for example, by NIH. 3) Drug companies do not follow f......more

Goodreads review by John on September 12, 2011

Dr. Angell is angry at the big pharmaceutical companies, or at least was when she wrote this in 2004. As such, she perhaps overreaches at times during the course of this indictment against big pharma and the American way of dealing with prescription medicines. You come across the word "reportedly,"......more

Goodreads review by Pete on December 02, 2012

The Truth About Drug Companies (2004) by Marcia Angell describes how pharmaceutical companies manipulate science and US politics in order to make more money. Angell was on the staff of the New England Journal of Medicine for over 20 years and became its first female editor. She has had extensive exp......more

Goodreads review by Jason on July 04, 2021

This book details at what length drug companies go to in order to make an obscene amount of profit, even if it puts people health at risk. The best thing we as consumers can do is to stay in good health so we don’t need to take medications as we get older or if that becomes necessary, then do our re......more


Quotes

“Dr. Angell’s case is tough, persuasive, and troubling.”
The New York Times

“In what should serve as the Fast Food Nation of the drug industry, Angell… presents a searing indictment of ‘big pharma’ as corrupt and corrupting.”
Publishers Weekly

The Truth About the Drug Companies is a sober, clear-eyed attack on the excesses of drug company power… a lucid, persuasive, and highly important book.”
The Boston Sunday Globe

“Her prose is clear and readable… Angell does an excellent job [making] a convincing case against Big Pharma.”
Chicago Sun-Times

“If you’ve ever suffered prescription drug sticker shock, Dr. Marcia Angell’s The Truth About the Drug Companies is the book for you.”
Newsday

“In-depth and insightful”
Rocky Mountain News

“Put your money on Angell. We need to know why drugs cost what they do, and we need to know how our physicians choose the drugs they give us.”
St. Louis Post Dispatch

“Engaging and well-written”
San Antonio Express-News

"Pharamceutical companies will need a new miracle pain reliever after the whipping they receive from Marcia Angell in her book….a starting point for serious discussion."
--The Hartford Courant

"If informed criticism contains the sharpest stings, author Marcia Angell's jolting indictument of 'Big Pharma' might just be enough to pierce the beast's hide."
--Minneapolis Star Tribune