Books in the category: Medical Risks

The Truth About the Drug Companies: How They Deceive Us and What to Do About It

– by Marcia Angell

In what should serve as the Fast Food Nation of the drug industry, Angell, former editor of the New England Journal of Medicine, presents a searing indictment of “big pharma” as corrupt and corrupting: of Congress, through huge campaign contributions; of the FDA, which is funded in part by the very companies it oversees; and, perhaps most shocking, of members of the medical profession and its institutions. Angell delineates how the drug giants, such as Pfizer and AstraZeneca, pay physicians to prescribe their products with gifts, junkets and marketing programs disguised as “professional education.”

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The Hundred-Year Lie: How to Protect Yourself from the Chemicals That Are Destroying Your Health

– by Randall Fitzgerald

This provocative and frightening look at the synthetic chemicals used by the processed foods, pharmaceutical and chemical industries delivers an excellent, up-to-date summary of “what is really in our food, water, vitamins, prescription drugs, childhood vaccines, cosmetics, and in our homes.” Former Wall Street Journal investigative journalist Fitzgerald (author of “Mugged by the State”) takes aim at the belief that “lab-created synthetics are as benign as — and more effective than — naturally occurring foods and medicines.”

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Selling Sickness: How the World’s Biggest Pharmaceutical Companies Are Turning Us All Into Patients

– by Ray Moynihan, Alan Cassels

This accessible study about the collusion between medical science and the drug industry emphasizes how drug companies market their products by either redefining problems as diseases (like female sexual dysfunction) or redefining a condition to encompass a greater percentage of the population. Moynihan, a health journalist for the New England Journal of Medicine and the Lancet, and Cassels, a Canadian science writer, note, for instance, that eight of the nine specialists who wrote the 2004 federal guideline on high cholesterol, which substantially increased the number of people in that category, have multiple financial ties to drug manufacturers.

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On the Take: How Medicine’s Complicity with Big Business Can Endanger Your Health

– by Jerome P. Kassirer

“Some physicians become known as whores.” This is strong language in Kassirer’s mostly temperate but tough look at how big business is corrupting medicine — but according to Kassirer, one doctor’s wife used the word “whore” to describe her husband’s accepting high fees to promote medical products. Kassirer, former editor-in-chief of the New England Journal of Medicine, notes the range of conflicts of interest between profit-centered business and people-centered medicine, such as the drug industry’s huge expenditures (in the billions) for courting doctors to use their products, for recruiting physicians to tout their drugs or, more slyly, to present seemingly objective medical discussions that, on closer examination, do favor the company’s product over others.

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Confessions of a Medical Heretic

– by Dr. Robert Mendelsohn

First published in 1979, this exposé of the medical profession — covering issues from unnecessary surgeries and prescribed drugs to preventive medicine and home births — has become a classic.  The statistics may be outdated, but the message is timeless. As one Amazon.com review says: “I loved this book when it first came out in 1979, and I still love it today — perhaps even more. The sad part is that, except for the fact that lots of the actual procedures, tests and drugs Dr. Mendelsohn wrote about in this book have changed, almost everything else seems to have remained the same.”

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Confessions of an Rx Drug Pusher

by Gwen Olsen

Author Gwen Olsen spent 15 years as a sales representative in the pharmaceutical industry, working for such corporations as Johnson & Johnson, Bristol-Myers Squibb and Abbott Laboratories. During that period, she learned firsthand how an unprecedented number of lethal drugs are unleashed on the United States market.

When her niece, Megan, committed suicide by setting herself on fire, Olsen knew that the adverse effects of the prescription drugs she had been taking were part of the reason. She began a campaign to raise awareness of the dangers of modern pharmaceuticals and the unethical practices of the drug manufacturers.

Now a mental health activist, Olsen has testified before the Food and Drug Administration’s Psycho-Pharmacology Committee, as well as many legislative committees, and has led rallies and marches in protest against psychiatric abuse.

With strong ties to the chiropractic profession, Olsen has received praise from DCs such as Dr. Ben Lerner, author of “Body by God,” who stated: “In a well researched, impeccably documented, finely written manner, Gwen Olsen has given us account of the gripping details of real people hurt by the failures of modern health care.”

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Thugs, Drugs and the War on Bugs

by Brad Case, DC

In this first book of a planned “Why We’re Sick” series, Dr. Case focuses primarily on the shortcomings of conventional medicine. He points to several conflicts of interest between “Big Pharma” and the US Food and Drug Administration and relates how pharmaceutical companies court doctors with everything from free samples to free seminars in exotic locations.

The book — subtitled “How the Natural Healthcare Revolution Will Lead Us Past Greed, Ego, and Scary Germs” — is also a powerful indictment of the American Medical Association, which he says protects and enriches its members by driving out the alternative competition.

“The medical/pharmaceutical establishment’s historical preoccupation with symptom suppression and disease management is a major factor in why we’re so unhealthy,” Case says. “In fact, the Journal of the American Medical Association admits that Western medicine kills 280,000 people per year, more than all other accidental deaths combined. They further admit that these reported deaths only represent about 5 percent of the total problem! Are these the people you want in charge of your health?”

In addition to the statistical, historical, and scientific perspectives, Case discusses some of the methods and treatments employed by holistic healers, his own experiences, and an overview of alternative therapies.

Case is a chiropractor, naturopath, and director of the Holistic Healing Center in Prunedale, Calif. A graduate of National University, he holds certificates in Applied Kinesiology, Nutrition Response Testing, Total Body Modification and others. He has been in practice since 1994.

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