The Shocking Truth about Pharmacy
The Shocking Truth about Pharmacy

Author: Dennis Miller

Publisher:

Published: 2021-08-06

Total Pages: 430

ISBN-13:

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In this explosive new book, Dennis Miller pulls the curtain wide open and exposes many previously hidden facts that are downright terrifying about pharmacy, drugs, pharmacists and chain drug stores. This is the first-ever in-depth expose'' of pharmacy written by a pharmacist. The author takes readers behind the prescription counter and reveals a wide range of critical insights that are not available anywhere else. This is an extremely important and urgently needed book for both pharmacists and the general public. It can--and should--permanently change the world of pills. It is a long overdue expose'' of the lies, hype, deceptions, distortions, and magical thinking that are so pervasive in this field. Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) sets a minimum price for paperback books using this publishing platform. The minimum price that KDP allows for this 430-page paperback book is $10.02. The author receives no royalties for the paperback version of this book. It is the author''s hope that price is not a limiting factor in the decision to read this book. The author is not interested in profiting financially from this book. The author hopes that this book prompts a widespread discussion of the critical issues regarding pharmacists, pharmaceuticals, pharmacy and, indeed, the viability of the profession. The author is not aware of any other book on the market that exposes the shocking truth from the perspective of a pharmacist. This book includes dozens of e-mails the author received from pharmacists as a result of his commentaries for nearly two decades in Drug Topics, one of the most popular magazines for pharmacists. These pharmacists'' e-mails reveal a very disturbing side of pharmacy about which the public is almost certainly unaware. With pharmaceuticals playing such a pivotal role in American society, the public urgently needs to understand how pharmacists have been complicit in legitimizing and promoting pill solutions for every conceivable health or medical problem. Pharmacy customers often say things like this to pharmacists: "I''m not sure whether I really want to take this drug my doctor prescribed. What do you think? Do you think it''s safe?" Pharmacy customers need to understand pharmacists'' attitudes and biases to fully appreciate the very wide variety of responses. Some of the issues discussed in this book include: What do pharmacists really think about the drugs they dispense? Have pharmacists swallowed Big Pharma''s Kool-Aid? Why are so many pharmacists disillusioned? Why pharmacy often resembles a religion or cult. Should pharmacists be more transparent about the risks versus benefits of pills? Are pharmacists as positive and supportive of drugs in conversations with close friends and family in comparison to discussions with customers? Do pharmacists take more (or fewer) pills than our customers? Do pharmacists feel that Americans are overmedicated (or grossly overmedicated)? Do pharmacists feel pressure from chain drug store corporate management to be basically positive and supportive toward drugs and to downplay adverse effects? Do pharmacists agree with Pharma''s overwhelmingly mechanistic and reductionist approach toward illness? What causes many pharmacists to wake up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat? Do pharmacists feel that pharmacy school focuses too heavily on molecules, cells and chemistry rather than on the health of the whole person? Why are pharmacists silent about the uneven quality with some generic drugs? Do pharmacists feel that many of our customers would be healthier spending their money at a farmers market rather than at a drug store? Are pharmacists nagged by the concern that they are supporting and legitimizing a model of health based disproportionately on pills rather than prevention?

The Truth About the Drug Companies
The Truth About the Drug Companies

Author: Marcia Angell

Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks

Published: 2005-08-09

Total Pages: 354

ISBN-13: 0375760946

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During her two decades at The New England Journal of Medicine, Dr. Marcia Angell had a front-row seat on the appalling spectacle of the pharmaceutical industry. She watched drug companies stray from their original mission of discovering and manufacturing useful drugs and instead become vast marketing machines with unprecedented control over their own fortunes. She saw them gain nearly limitless influence over medical research, education, and how doctors do their jobs. She sympathized as the American public, particularly the elderly, struggled and increasingly failed to meet spiraling prescription drug prices. Now, in this bold, hard-hitting new book, Dr. Angell exposes the shocking truth of what the pharmaceutical industry has become–and argues for essential, long-overdue change. Currently Americans spend a staggering $200 billion each year on prescription drugs. As Dr. Angell powerfully demonstrates, claims that high drug prices are necessary to fund research and development are unfounded: The truth is that drug companies funnel the bulk of their resources into the marketing of products of dubious benefit. Meanwhile, as profits soar, the companies brazenly use their wealth and power to push their agenda through Congress, the FDA, and academic medical centers. Zeroing in on hugely successful drugs like AZT (the first drug to treat HIV/AIDS), Taxol (the best-selling cancer drug in history), and the blockbuster allergy drug Claritin, Dr. Angell demonstrates exactly how new products are brought to market. Drug companies, she shows, routinely rely on publicly funded institutions for their basic research; they rig clinical trials to make their products look better than they are; and they use their legions of lawyers to stretch out government-granted exclusive marketing rights for years. They also flood the market with copycat drugs that cost a lot more than the drugs they mimic but are no more effective. The American pharmaceutical industry needs to be saved, mainly from itself, and Dr. Angell proposes a program of vital reforms, which includes restoring impartiality to clinical research and severing the ties between drug companies and medical education. Written with fierce passion and substantiated with in-depth research, The Truth About the Drug Companies is a searing indictment of an industry that has spun out of control.

Bad Pharma
Bad Pharma

Author: Ben Goldacre

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Published: 2013-02-05

Total Pages: 449

ISBN-13: 0374710171

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We like to imagine that medicine is based on evidence and the results of fair testing and clinical trials. In reality, those tests and trials are often profoundly flawed. We like to imagine that doctors who write prescriptions for everything from antidepressants to cancer drugs to heart medication are familiar with the research literature about a drug, when in reality much of the research is hidden from them by drug companies. We like to imagine that doctors are impartially educated, when in reality much of their education is funded by the pharmaceutical industry. We like to imagine that regulators have some code of ethics and let only effective drugs onto the market, when in reality they approve useless drugs, with data on side effects casually withheld from doctors and patients. All these problems have been shielded from public scrutiny because they're too complex to capture in a sound bite. But Ben Goldacre shows that the true scale of this murderous disaster fully reveals itself only when the details are untangled. He believes we should all be able to understand precisely how data manipulation works and how research misconduct in the medical industry affects us on a global scale. With Goldacre's characteristic flair and a forensic attention to detail, Bad Pharma reveals a shockingly broken system and calls for regulation. This is the pharmaceutical industry as it has never been seen before.

Death By Prescription
Death By Prescription

Author: Ray Strand

Publisher: Thomas Nelson

Published: 2006-10-08

Total Pages: 273

ISBN-13: 1418514888

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Experienced family doctor Ray Strand writes his patients prescriptions every week, but he also believes that prescribing drugs should be a last resort in most medical cases-not a first choice. In Death by Prescription he provides simple guidelines to help readers protect themselves and their families from suffering adverse reactions to prescription medication.

Pharma
Pharma

Author: Gerald Posner

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2020-03-10

Total Pages: 816

ISBN-13: 1501152041

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Award-winning journalist and New York Times bestselling author Gerald Posner reveals the heroes and villains of the trillion-dollar-a-year pharmaceutical industry and delivers “a withering and encyclopedic indictment of a drug industry that often seems to prioritize profits over patients (The New York Times Book Review). Pharmaceutical breakthroughs such as anti­biotics and vaccines rank among some of the greatest advancements in human history. Yet exorbitant prices for life-saving drugs, safety recalls affecting tens of millions of Americans, and soaring rates of addiction and overdose on pre­scription opioids have caused many to lose faith in drug companies. Now, Americans are demanding a national reckoning with a monolithic industry. “Gerald’s dogged reporting, sets Pharma apart from all books on this subject” (The Washington Standard) as we are introduced to brilliant scientists, incorruptible government regulators, and brave whistleblowers facing off against company exec­utives often blinded by greed. A business that profits from treating ills can create far deadlier problems than it cures. Addictive products are part of the industry’s DNA, from the days when corner drugstores sold morphine, heroin, and cocaine, to the past two decades of dangerously overprescribed opioids. Pharma also uncovers the real story of the Sacklers, the family that became one of America’s wealthiest from the success of OxyContin, their blockbuster narcotic painkiller at the center of the opioid crisis. Relying on thousands of pages of government and corporate archives, dozens of hours of interviews with insiders, and previously classified FBI files, Posner exposes the secrets of the Sacklers’ rise to power—revelations that have long been buried under a byzantine web of interlocking companies with ever-changing names and hidden owners. The unexpected twists and turns of the Sackler family saga are told against the startling chronicle of a powerful industry that sits at the intersection of public health and profits. “Explosively, even addictively, readable” (Booklist, starred review), Pharma reveals how and why American drug com­panies have put earnings ahead of patients.

Sickening
Sickening

Author: John Abramson

Publisher: HarperCollins

Published: 2022-02-08

Total Pages: 336

ISBN-13: 1328956989

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The inside story of how Big Pharma’s relentless pursuit of ever-higher profits corrupts medical knowledge—misleading doctors, misdirecting American health care, and harming our health. The United States spends an excess $1.5 trillion annually on health care compared to other wealthy countries—yet the amount of time that Americans live in good health ranks a lowly 68th in the world. At the heart of the problem is Big Pharma, which funds most clinical trials and therefore controls the research agenda, withholds the real data from those trials as corporate secrets, and shapes most of the information relied upon by health care professionals. In this no-holds-barred exposé, Dr. John Abramson—one of the foremost experts on the drug industry’s deceptive tactics—combines patient stories with what he learned during many years of serving as an expert in national drug litigation to reveal the tangled web of financial interests at the heart of the dysfunction in our health-care system. For example, one of pharma’s best-kept secrets is that the peer reviewers charged with ensuring the accuracy and completeness of the clinical trial reports published in medical journals do not even have access to complete data and must rely on manufacturer-influenced summaries. Likewise for the experts who write the clinical practice guidelines that define our standards of care. The result of years of research and privileged access to the inner workings of the U.S. medical-industrial complex, Sickening shines a light on the dark underbelly of American health care—and presents a path toward genuine reform.

Bottle of Lies
Bottle of Lies

Author: Katherine Eban

Publisher: HarperCollins

Published: 2020-06-23

Total Pages: 523

ISBN-13: 0063054108

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A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * New York Times Notable Book * Best Book of the Year: New York Public Library, Kirkus Reviews, Science Friday With a new postscript by the author From an award-winning journalist, an explosive narrative investigation of the generic drug boom that reveals fraud and life-threatening dangers on a global scale—The Jungle for pharmaceuticals Many have hailed the widespread use of generic drugs as one of the most important public-health developments of the twenty-first century. Today, almost 90 percent of our pharmaceutical market is comprised of generics, the majority of which are manufactured overseas. We have been reassured by our doctors, our pharmacists and our regulators that generic drugs are identical to their brand-name counterparts, just less expensive. But is this really true? Katherine Eban’s Bottle of Lies exposes the deceit behind generic-drug manufacturing—and the attendant risks for global health. Drawing on exclusive accounts from whistleblowers and regulators, as well as thousands of pages of confidential FDA documents, Eban reveals an industry where fraud is rampant, companies routinely falsify data, and executives circumvent almost every principle of safe manufacturing to minimize cost and maximize profit, confident in their ability to fool inspectors. Meanwhile, patients unwittingly consume medicine with unpredictable and dangerous effects. The story of generic drugs is truly global. It connects middle America to China, India, sub-Saharan Africa and Brazil, and represents the ultimate litmus test of globalization: what are the risks of moving drug manufacturing offshore, and are they worth the savings? A decade-long investigation with international sweep, high-stakes brinkmanship and big money at its core, Bottle of Lies reveals how the world’s greatest public-health innovation has become one of its most astonishing swindles.

Know Your Remedies
Know Your Remedies

Author: He Bian

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2022-03-08

Total Pages: 264

ISBN-13: 0691200130

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"Traditional Chinese medicine has been practiced in various forms for more than a thousand years. Practitioners may heal patients with herbal remedies, acupuncture, massage, exercise, and modified diets. Even today, herbal medicines are of particular importance; Chinese pharmacies containing a vast array of remedies can be found in cities and towns the world over. This book is an interdisciplinary and cultural history of the concept of "pharmacy," both the drugs themselves and the trade in medicine, during the Ming and Qing dynasties of early modern China. This was a time of change for traditional Chinese medicine and for Chinese science as a whole. Many historians have argued that sixteenth-century China was a high point of scientific inquiry, followed by a period of intellectual decline. Though political and intellectual shifts led to a crisis of authority over pharmaceutical knowledge in the sixteenth through eighteenth centuries, Bian argues that this period of supposed intellectual decline was in fact characterized by numerous efforts to further refine and spread the pharmacological knowledge amassed in the Ming dynasty. She draws on a wide range of primary sources, but particularly through the study of bencao (pronounced "pen ts'ao"), a genre of encyclopaedic works, often called matteria medica or pharmacopoeia in the West, that collect information on medicinal substances. As the early modern Chinese Empire expanded and print culture became more widespread, the pursuit of medical remedies became a significant commercial enterprise. The author connects theory and practice of pharmacy during the Ming and Qing dynasties to broader developments in intellectual history, book culture, commerce, and taxation"--

Confessions of an Rx Drug Pusher
Confessions of an Rx Drug Pusher

Author: Gwen Olsen

Publisher: iUniverse

Published: 2009-04-24

Total Pages: 176

ISBN-13: 1935278606

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Winner of the IPPY Award gold medal for Most Progressive Health Book On December 2, 2004, Gwen Olsen’s niece Megan committed suicide by setting herself on fire—and ended her tortured life as a victim of the adverse effects of prescription drugs. Olsen’s poignant autobiographical journey through the darkness of mental illness and the catastrophic consequences that lurk in medicine cabinets around the country offers an honest glimpse into alarming statistics and a health care system ranked last among nineteen industrialized nations worldwide. As a former sales representative in the pharmaceutical industry for several years, Olsen learned firsthand how an unprecedented number of lethal drugs are unleashed in the United States market, but her most heartrending education into the dangers of antidepressants would come as a victim and ultimately, as a survivor. Rigorously researched and documented, Confessions of an Rx Drug Pusher is a moving human drama that shares one woman’s unforgettable journey of faith, forgiveness, and healing.