Pharmaceutical Companies War On Vitamins Posted: 05-25-07 11:46am
Marcia Angell, a faculty member of the
Harvard Medical
School and a former editor of the New
England Journal of
Medicine, in her book, "The Truth About
the Drug Companies,"
discusses the following ways drug
companies deceive Americans:
It plies attending physicians with
expense-paid junkets
to St. Croix and Key West, Fla., where
they are given
honoraria and consulting fees to listen to
promotional
presentations.
It promotes new or little-known diseases
such
as "social anxiety disorder" and
"premenstrual dysphoric
disorder" as a way of selling the drugs
that treat them.
It sets up phony front groups disguised as
"patient
advocacy organizations."
It hires ghostwriters to produce
misleading scientific
articles and then pays academic physicians
to sign on as
authors.
It sends paid lackeys and shills out onto
the academic
lecture circuit to ''educate" doctors
about a drug's
unapproved uses.
It hires multinational PR firms to trumpet
dubious
studies as scientific breakthroughs while
burying the
studies that are likely to harm sales.
It buys up the results of publicly funded
research.
It maintains a political chokehold on the
American
public by donating more money to political
campaigns than
any other industry in the country.
