How big pharma deceives us

 Most of the information in the post comes from posts I wrote in 2015. You have likely never read those posts or have forgotten the information, which, by the way, comes from a book written by Marcia Angell, the former editor in chief of The New England Journal of Medicine. She says, among other things, that the pharmaceutical industry has become “a marketing machine to sell drugs of dubious benefit.”

Here are some of the ways big pharma deceives:

Over charging. The cost of the drug is unrelated to the costs of research and development, as they would have us believe. Instead, the costs, which are continually rising, are based on what the public is willing to pay.

Manipulating research findings to make drugs look good. As much as 90 percent of published medical information—the kind of information that doctors rely on—is flawed, according to the world’s foremost expert on the credibility of medical research.

Rewarding doctors to promote their drugs. Companies spend more than four billion dollars nationwide in payments to doctors as incentives for attending industry-sponsored conferences, as well as for promoting their drugs at the conferences.

Rewarding doctors to prescribe their drugs. The rewards to doctors range from meals to generous honoraria for speaking at conferences. As a rule, the doctors who prescribe the most are rewarded the most.

Promoting old drugs as new. Most of the new drugs approved by the FDA are “me too” drugs—old drugs whose molecules have been only slightly altered so they can appear as new. They are more expensive but no more effective than the old models.

Passing off their professionally written articles as the work of academics. Drug companies pay professional writers to produce academic papers according to the companies’ specifications then reward the academics for adding their names to them.

Passing off marketing as “education.” The so-called “education” programs come out of drug companies’ marketing budgets, which, collectively in 2001 amounted to $19 billion. By masquerading marketing as education, big pharma can evade legal constraints on marketing activities.

Let's hope new legislation has some impact on this behavior.

For an introduction to this blog, see I Just Say No; for a list of blog topics, click the Topics tab.