E-DRUG: Review of David Healy's book, Pharmageddon
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Dear All
This may interest some members: Health Affairs review by Donald Light of David Healy’s [book] PHARMAGGDEON
http://www.ethics.harvard.edu/lab/blog/262-from-institutional-corruption-to-pharmageddon
[Please fix link in browser if broken. I copy a portion of the review below as Fair Use for readers without internet access. DB]
"In Pharmageddon, Healy offers a fresh insight that new strategies to develop “personalized medicine” and raise costs to new levels (for instance, by figuring out ways to re-patent drugs going off patent) are undermining universal health care in Europe and elsewhere, often with little evidence of real clinical gain. For the most part, he writes, looking for cures is out for pharmaceutical companies because that would end sales. Researching and developing drugs for cancers, and HIV/AIDS are largely paid for by taxpayers and donor foundations for specific diseases but then priced at levels that threaten the commitment of nations to affordable universal health care. Increasingly, countries and insurance companies conclude that the modest benefits do not warrant the staggering prices charged an decide not to cover them for patients. However, this leads to two-tier access for patients willing to pay privately.
If people want to understand how the way they think about their bodies as a bundle of risks to be managed by drugs came about, why the workforce is getting “sicker,” why the major pharmaceutical companies are banking on further overdiagnosis and overtreatment, and why this is undermining universal health care, they should read this book.4,10 Then, readers should go on to discuss its implications in classrooms and policy circles."
Don Light