Eight or nine years ago, a former editor of the New England Journal of Medicine, Dr. Marcia Angell, wrote a book called The Truth About the Drug Companies. It was an often searing critique of their deceptive research methods and business practices that really pulled back the veil on what Dr. Angell calls the marketing machine that the pharmaceutical industry has become.
This is important consciousness, because the pressure for profits above all other objectives of business has led to a state whereby we’re medicating more and more Americans unnecessarily to feed the profit goals of shareholders and executives and not the health goal of the drug takers.
Fabricated diseases, diminished alternatives and multi-billion dollar advertising mean our medical system turns only in one direction now to alleviate suffering – towards the pharmacy. It’s putting big money into drug company coffers, and deteriorating the medical education of doctors worldwide.
But it’s doing something even more sinister. It’s killing us.
Medicating Ourselves Into Oblivion, today on Thinking with Somebody Else’s Head.