Take the pivotal question of peer review journals. Merck sold $12 billion worth of Vioxx over four and a half years.Ībramson says that doctors are just not aware of the power of the pharmaceutical industry to set the healthcare agenda in this country. There was civil litigation and compensation of about $4.7 billion. One section deals with Vioxx, a pain killing drug that caused 40,000 to 60,000 deaths. That’s the conclusion of Harvard Medical School’s John Abramson in his new book Sickening: How Big Pharma Broke American Health Care and How We Can Repair It (Mariner, 2022).Īt the heart of the book is corporate crime. It is Big Pharma that funds most clinical trials and therefore controls the research agenda, withholds the real data from those trials as corporate secrets, and shapes most of the information relied upon by health care professionals. In a nutshell, it’s the power of large multinational pharmaceutical corporations. In 2019, we were at 68th – behind China, Cuba and Jamaica.Ĭitizens of Japan live eight years longer in good health than Americans.Īnd yet, we spend $1.5 trillion more per year on our healthcare system than do other wealthy countries.
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