Safety and health are not the first priorities of either the pharmaceutical companies or their regulators. Nancy Murdoch did so well with her first guest post, “Follow the Science to Treatment,” that she’s been invited back.
“As to diseases, make a habit of two things to help, or at least, to do no harm.”
Hippocrates
“Most people believe the medicines they take are safe and effective, that they have been tested properly and have passed stringent regulatory scrutiny. Few people understand the extent to which pharmaceutical promotion undermines these assumptions.” Thus reads the first sentence in a book recently published called The Illusion of Evidence-based Medicine by Jon Jureidini and Leemon McHenry.
While many books have been written on this subject, this comes at a time when pharmaceutical companies are in the sights of the public, and these authors have inside information that has been relatively unavailable before. They became privy to much of the information because they served as consultants to a Los Angeles based law firm that often acts as counsel for those suing pharmaceutical companies because of severe or fatal reactions to drugs. By deposition the authors had access to documents and emails which laid out the serious problems facing the pharmaceutical companies and their plans to cover it up. Because of the damning nature of the contents, the documents were considered by the court to be important enough to be declassified and made available to the public.
While the authors intended audience is generally lawyers and doctors due to its technical jargon, the revelations of the corruption should be of interest to the public in general, especially to those who take prescribed medication now or in the future. After all, the United States is at ground zero for the corruption, with worldwide implications.
