A Gift for Drug Makers

The New York Times > Opinion > Op-Ed Columnist: A Gift for Drug Makers
By BOB HERBERT
(reference from Maria Inês Reinert Azambuja)
The drug companies have an incredible racket going, as Marcia Angell, the former editor in chief of The New England Journal of Medicine, documents in her book "The Truth About the Drug Companies."

"Now primarily a marketing machine to sell drugs of dubious benefit," she wrote, "this industry uses its wealth and power to co-opt every institution that might stand in its way, including the U.S. Congress, the Food and Drug Administration, academic medical centers, and the medical profession itself. (Most of its marketing efforts are focused on influencing doctors, since they must write the prescriptions.)".....