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Our Daily Meds: How the Pharmaceutical Companies Transformed Themselves into Slick Marketing Machines and Hooked the Nation on Prescription Drugs | 
 enlarge | Author: Melody Petersen
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Category: Book
List Price: $26.00
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Avg. Customer Rating:  27 reviews
Sales Rank: 26128
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 448
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.5
Dimensions (in): 9 x 6.2 x 1.5
ISBN: 0374228272
Dewey Decimal Number: 338.4761510973
EAN: 9780374228279
ASIN: 0374228272
Publication Date: March 18, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: Brand new item. Over 3.5 million customers served. Order now. Selling online since 1995. Order with confidence. Code: B20080828211842T
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Product Description
In the last thirty years, the big pharmaceutical companies have transformed themselves into marketing machines selling dangerous medicines as if they were Coca-Cola or Cadillacs. They pitch drugs with video games and soft cuddly toys for children; promote them in churches and subways, at NASCAR races and state fairs. They’ve become experts at promoting fear of disease, just so they can sell us hope. No question: drugs can save lives. But the relentless marketing that has enriched corporate executives and sent stock prices soaring has come with a dark side. Prescription pills taken as directed by physicians are estimated to kill one American every five minutes. And that figure doesn’t reflect the damage done as the overmedicated take to the roads. Our Daily Meds connects the dots for the first time to show how corporate salesmanship has triumphed over science inside the biggest pharmaceutical companies and, in turn, how this promotion driven industry has taken over the practice of medicine and is changing American life. It is an ageless story of the battle between good and evil, with potentially life-changing consequences for everyone, not just the 65 percent of Americans who unscrew a prescription cap every day. An industry with the promise to help so many is now leaving a legacy of needless harm.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 22 more reviews...
 OUR DAILY MEDS August 20, 2008
Our Daily Meds: How the Pharmaceutical Companies Transformed Themselves into Slick Marketing Machines and Hooked the Nation on Prescription Drugs Anyone who takes prescription drugs should read this! Doctors and pharmacists should also read it to realize how much they are being influenced by pharmaceutical companies. The book is easy reading and fascinating, and it is well researched.
daily med August 17, 2008
excellent with lots of research. Marketing in America and the world has taken on a new meaning now in health care
Excellent expose as far as it goes August 3, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
So you thought you had already heard every possible method of perversion of ethics, morals, and the entire USA economy by Big Pharma? Petersen made an important point near the end (p318) on the value of Big Pharma's drugs: "In 1980 a 65-year-old American woman could be comforted by the fact that her expected life span was longer than that of her contemporaries living almost anywhere else in the world. Now with access to an almost unlimited supply of the pharmaceutical industry's newest and most expensive medicines, an American woman of 65 has lost her place... by 2002, among 30 nations, American women came in 17th." She also wrote that an American man of 65 can expect a shorter life than his Mexican counterpart. This would have been a good place to note that USA life expectancy at birth in 2006 was only 13th in the world at 78 years despite the biggest per capita expenditure on health in the world by far.
Even finding information on death by drugs was shown by Petersen to be more difficult because the percent of patients dying in hospitals who are autopsied is down to 8% from 50% in 1945 (p308). Pinning the cause of death on a drug is fraught with danger for the providers, so patients killed by various drugs are said to have a cause of death of their original illness, not the drug used to treat its symptoms!
"Imitating neighborhood grocers, the drugmakers offer coupons, free gifts, and deals to buy six prescriptions and get one free." (p4). Drugs for children are flavored and colored to mimic candy (p4). Plots of TV shows are based on brand name drugs, at times based on suggestions of their makers (p5). Side effects of drugs are treated with other drugs. Drug makers not only shower physicians with gifts, but may also show them how to make more money out of a given practice, or even help in relocation expenses (p8). They create diseases (restless-leg syndrome or overactive bladder) They often have most of the experts in one disease under control as consultants. They create patient support groups, while concealing the source of support. They spent more on lobbying in DC and elsewhere than any other business. They succeeded in obtaining permission to run direct-to-consumer ads on TV and elsewhere. Like some other industries, the founders, often scientists or MDs, when replaced by accountants and sales people at the top, move away from "helping people" to conning people for maximum profit.
Chapters 2-3 were devoted to showing how even Petersen's native Iowa has been totally captured by Big Pharma. The next chapters revealed over medication of children with Ritalin, but no idea of what causes ADHD. Then the contrast of the early years of Big Pharma with aspirin, penicillin, and other worthwhile drugs, with the present (since 1980 or so) descent into less worthwhile drugs accompanied by total control of the approval process, including most clinical trials. Even the blockbuster Tagamet for stomach ulcers, a symptom easer, was shown to have been promoted long after the microbial cause was known. Complete perversion of medical journals by Big Pharma was shown. A favorable paper on a drug could lead to $million reprint orders, advertisements in the journal, press releases, and the main points of advertisements on TV, internet and elswhere. Ghostwriting by PR firms and academic consultants was exposed. Papers sponsored by Big Pharma are shown to be much more favorable to drugs than non-sponsored ones. Even editorials are often results of bribery! (p189) The over promotion of Pfizer's Neurontin(tm) (gabapentin) for a dozen conditions not approved by the FDA was lawful, but destructive due to side effects. (p242). The "beauty" of side effects was that they provided the excuse for another pill! (p301). There is much more, including how to cheat with placebo controlled randomized clinical trials.
The writing is very easy to read and well edited. Referencing is good, but by the page number method. There is a good index. Where it divulges corruption in mainstream medicine this book is excellent.
So why not 5 stars? Well, there is not a single graph, chart, table, photo or even a cartoon. Petersen noted that Detrol and Ditropan for "overactive bladder" cause dementia (p37). But she missed the more important finding that statin drugs such as Lipitor(tm) also cause dementia, cancer, and transient global amnesia. See "Lipitor(tm) Thief of Memory" and "Statin Drug Side Effects" by Duane Graveline. She missed the entire fraud on cholesterol, and the futility of low-fat high-carb diets. She missed the suicide and murder caused by SSRI antidepressants in some people. She barely discussed the 50,000 deaths (maybe twice that in the USA alone) from antiarrythmic drugs. She missed the HIV/AIDS scam (http://www.jpands.org/jpands1302.htmp33). The war on supplements did not get its due. Once you realize that many chronic conditions are treatable by supplements, which do not put people in hospital, the costs of corruption are seen doubled. Examples: coenzyme Q10 for heart failure, L-tryptophan for depression.
In an Epilogue, many suggestions are made to a hopelessly immoral industry and its goverment lackeys. Most suggestions are moral exhortations, such as more autopsies, a halt to bribery of physicians, having the NIH "make science honest again", inform patients better about side effects, strengthen the FDA, stop covert advertising by celebrities, and spend more on prevention (but not much concrete help). This is not good enough because such prods from the honest minority have always existed. Why not suggest that an FDA Commissioner needs to be confirmed by Congress, and can be impeached by Congress if any trace of bribery is shown? And whose terms survive like those of justices beyond that of the president who made the appointment. Past or future employment by drug, device or test makers would be out.
In addition to these broader areas of omission there are 17 discussions of questionable statements available by e-mailing me at kauffman37@yahoo.com.
 There are MANY books out there..... July 27, 2008
.....that do what this book purports to do, and do it more elegantly, more effectively, make use of more complete and scholarly references and material, and present more subtle and nuanced arguments.
I'd recommend reading almost any of them instead of this one. I've given the book three stars rather than two because the topic is so important that I think that anyone who cares at all about the issues ought to read SOMETHING.
Our Daily Poisons July 22, 2008
Loving to read, especially on health topics, I am just finishing this well written, but very sad look at the pharmacuetical industry called, "Your Daily Meds," by Melody Petersen. It was published in 2008 and so is very up to date. According to Ms. Petersen, the era of the blockbuster drug, who's sales had to be over a billion dollars a year to qualify, has now turned into the era of the mega blockbuster whose sales have to be at least several billion in order to qualifiy. The highest yearly sales total for a single drug is 8 billion. In 2006 we spent 2.1 trillion on medical care.
In the Greek laungauge, the word for pharmacy is pharmakia, which means "witchcraft." And not only are these drugs usually extemely expensive, but they also have a list of side effects a mile long. Did you know that all of the school shootings, such as Columbine, were done by young people on antidepressants, such as Prozac and Ritilin? The deceitfulness of the drug industry in lying to doctors and the general public and getting various meds prescribed for maladies the FDA has not approved the drug to be used for is criminal. Even the safety testing on these drugs is shoddy and deisigned with only one prupose in mind, which is to make it appear affective and safe, even when it is anything but that.
According to the author, "By 2007 just about every major pharmaceutical company was under investigation for fraudulent marketing or other illegal busines practices. Prosecutors have tried to discourage the fraud by imposing fines of nearly a billion dollars on some drug companies. The pharmaceutical executives appear to consider these as little more than the cost of doing business. With no limits on drugs prices in Americaa, the companies have simply raised their prices to cover the problem." As the author says, "There is a kind of madness to it." Paying millions of dollars in government fines and millions more to the families of the victums who suffered or died and then hiking your prices and working even harder to promote your products is mad.
The biggest industry in my home town is one of the two local hospitals, operated by the Mayo Clinic. There is never a time when they don't have a building project going on. The other hospital is constantly building something as well. As that is where the money is, they are also in constant competition to get the latest medical testing device. If you don't already receive Dr. Joseph Mercola's health email, I would suggest you look into it. It has the latest news on various health subjects.
My biggest question concerning all this is, "what do we do about it?" I personally use an alternative health care practitioner the few times I need one. In her epiloque the author gives some good suggestions for turning things around. Good ideas that they are, it won't surprise me with all the money driven clout the drug companies have, if none of them get implemented.
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