From Publishers Weekly
The drug business is the most profitable in all of capitalism, journalist Law notes in this scattershot indictment of the pharmaceutical industry, but what do consumers get for the money shoveled into it? A dwindling stream of exorbitantly expensive new drugs, she contends, most of them "me-too" competitors, patent-prolonging reformulations of existing products or marginally effective nostrums for diffuse complaints; vast marketing budgets to cajole consumers into demanding-and doctors into prescribing-unnecessary medications; biased scientific studies and corrupted or intimidated researchers; a regulatory system lobbied and suborned into allowing unsafe and ineffective drugs on the market; and a society that automatically pops a pill for every discontent, real or imagined. Law offers a comprehensive, if disorganized, rehash of a now familiar but still timely portrait of drug companies' perfidy and greed, studded with case studies of firestorms like the Vioxx scandal and the controversy over the possibly deadly side-effects of anti-depressants. She's on shakier ground when she dilates her case into a brief against conventional medicine and in favor of a murky "holistic" regimen of "complementary"-i.e. alternative-therapies that harmonize with "the body's natural intelligence" and exploit the "untapped healing power" of the placebo effect. Law's flirtations with fringe conceits weaken an otherwise serviceable science-based critique of the drug industry.
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*Starred Review* British journalist Law deconstructs the relationship between Big Pharma, on one hand, and medical professionals and patients, on the other, and declares it unhealthy for everybody, though not financially for a handful of major international pharmaceutical companies. How can it be healthy when those companies' annual marketing budgets outstrip the annual budgets of all of the medical schools in the U.S. combined? How can it be healthy when those companies pick and choose which clinical tests of new drugs will be made public? How can it be healthy when the regulating agencies in charge of protecting public health interests are inexorably tied to the pharmaceutical industry? On the other hand, who other than those with ties to pharmaceutical companies can decipher the science-speak of all their reports? And who is to speak for the everyman seeking relief from the pain of everything from real illness to aging? Law's conclusion won't be popular, since she lays the burden on doctors to advocate for their patients, often at the expense of Big Pharma. And while it is some comfort to know that the U.S. isn't alone in its health care woes, it is still darn little comfort. Donna Chavez
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About the Author
Jacky Law has written about healthcare for 25 years. For seven years she worked as an editor at Script magazine, a monthly international pharmaceutical title. She left in 2004 to write Big Pharma.
