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Book Review: Melody Petersen's Our Daily Meds
New York Times reporter Melody Petersen's deeply researched, eloquent indictment of the pharmaceutical industry already bears one of the longest subtitles ever (How the Pharmaceutical Companies Transformed Themselves into Slick Marketing Machines and Hooked the Nation on Prescription Drugs). Hopefully, the book will also bear long scrutiny by the new administration in Washington as they prepare to overhaul our broken health-care system.
Today, two-thirds of Americans take at least one prescription drug per day. A mere 25 years ago, this glut of pills would have seemed impossible, not to say ridiculous, but that was before "Big Pharma" morphed from a research-oriented, largely public service industry into a marketing-driven money machine.
Petersen does a stellar job of laying out the facts, with one piercing, jaw-dropping anecdote after another. Some pharmaceutical company travesties have been covered before, such as the practice of buying (there's no other way to say it) doctors with cruises, resort vacations, HD televisions and such; widespread advertising, even to the point of sponsoring NASCAR vehicles; ad agencies ghostwriting medical journal articles; and turning under-funded university medical schools into Big Pharma subsidiaries.
Petersen is at her best when documenting the transformation of drug companies into moral grotesqueries, a depressing trend that's typified by the story of how one drug was marketed. Detrol was developed as a treatment for incontinence, a minor problem in terms of the number of people who have it. To boost sales, its makers, Pharmacia, in effect invented a new disease called "overactive bladder," which, they repeatedly claimed was a serious "disease" that needed a major league prescription drug. Detrol, in the long run, has proved to be no more effective than previously available, much cheaper, drugs. There has been one difference, though: Some Detrol patients started hallucinating and suffering from dementia. No matter. Pharmacia was pleased that Detrol had become, as they planned, a "blockbuster" product. Unfortunately, similar stories of pharmaceutical marketing overwhelming doctors, patients and common sense are nearly a dime a dozen. Petersen ends her book with comprehensive suggestions for reform of Big Pharma. Let's hope someone in D.C. is listening.
Our Daily Meds by Melody Petersen
Picador, 448 pages, $16
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