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Overdo$ed America: The Broken Promise of American Medicine The Truth About the Drug Companies: How They Deceive Us and What to Do About It
Overdo$ed America: The Broken Promise of American Medicine by John Abramson, MD; 332 pp, $24.95, ISBN 0-06-056852-6, New York, NY, HarperCollins, 2004.
The Truth About the Drug Companies: How They Deceive Us and What to Do About It by Marcia Angell, MD; 305 pp, $24.95, ISBN 0-375-50846-5, New York, NY, Random House Inc, 2004.
Arch Ophthalmol. 2005;123:876-877.
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Both books enumerate health care problems created by the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries. Dr Abramson is a primary care physician who took time off to write his book, and Dr Angell is now a member of the Harvard Medical School’s Department of Social Medicine. She was the editor-in-chief of the New England Journal of Medicine. Each author lists the problems and proposes solutions. There are many commonalities, albeit different perspectives.
The lack of information that leads clinicians to deliver poor care is the most noisome for Dr Abramson, probably because he spent most of his career as a clinician. He delves into specific instances describing when information was manipulated to the detriment of his patients so that drugs would be sold and companies would profit. The statins (with exaggerated claims), COX-2 inhibitors (now in the news for drug-company suppression of known complications), high-dose chemotherapy and bone marrow transplantation (for . . . [Full Text of this Article]
AUTHOR INFORMATION
Samuel Packer, MD, Reviewer
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