title: The Truth About the Drug Companies: How They Deceive Us and What to Do About It
author:  Marcia Angell 
description: Many Americans have wondered why prescription drugs have become so expensive while advertising for those drugs seems to grow exponentially. Former <I>New England Journal of Medicine</I> Editor Marcia Angell has some answers. The pharmaceutical industry, according to Angell, is fraught with corruption and doing a disservice to customers, the federal government, and to the medical establishment itself. In <I>The Truth About the Drug Companies</I>, Angell explains how a huge portion of the revenue generated by "Big Pharma" goes not into research and development but into aggressive marketing campaigns to sell their product. She describes how, even though the drug companies claim that it costs them an average of 802 million dollars per drug to develop new medicines, that figure is obscenely inflated since it factors in marketing as well as expected interest the company would have received had they invested the money in the open market. Meanwhile, Angell says, most of the R & D work is done by colleges and universities funded by the government. There are also problems with the drugs themselves, Angell indicates, since a majority are "me-too drugs", slightly modified versions of existing products which meant to address concerns of consumers most likely to spend money on pharmaceuticals. Thus, the market is filled with remarkably similar drugs to treat depression and high cholesterol while potentially life-saving medicines for diseases afflicting third-world countries are discontinued because they aren't profitable. In the books most damning passage, Angell tells of the high-priced junkets offered to doctors, ostensibly offered as educational opportunities that seem to constitute little more than bribes. The prognosis for reform is a grim one, Angell indicates, due to the massive cash reserves and lobbying efforts of "Big Pharma." Indeed, that lobby was hard at work trying to discredit her claims immediately upon the book's publication. But for anyone who's paid a pharmacy bill, <I>The Truth About the Drug Companies</I> is a fascinating read. <I>--John Moe</I>
zlib_text: **DOPESICK**
  
   **Dealers, Doctors & the Drug Company that Addicted America**
  
   **Beth Macy**
  
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  Beth Macy takes us into the heart of America’s struggle with opioid addiction.
  From distressed small communities in Central Appalachia to wealthy suburbs and
  once-idyllic farm towns, this powerful and moving story illustrates how a
  national crisis became so firmly entrenched.
  
  At the heart of the narrative is a large corporation, Purdue – whose owners
  are celebrated for their sponsorship of art galleries and museums – that
  targeted areas of the country already awash in painkillers and encouraged
  small town doctors to prescribe OxyContin, a highly addictive drug. Evidence
  of its capacity to enslave its users was suppressed. Macy tries to answer a
  grie