Big Pharma by Jacky Law
Pharmaceutical medicine is very, very big business. The top ten players earned more than $200 billion in 2003. One drug, Pfizer's cholesterol pill Lipitor, had sales of more than $9 billion. This kind of money buys an awful lot of friends among doctors and politicians. Most of those involved in the formulation of public health policy seems happy with the present system. The trouble is that the public is starting to have doubts. There is a growing sense that the vast profits of drug companies and their control of the research agenda might not be that good for our health. Jacky Law takes the reader on a journey through the pharmaceutical business and shows how the public is quite right to be concerned about conventional medicine, as it has developed since the late 1970s. She tells a story of spectacular regulatory failure, phenomenally high prices, betrayal of the public interest and a growing awareness among ordinary people that things could be very different. Sophisticated marketing and public relations, not scientific excellence, have helped corporations to preside unchallenged over matters of life and death. It is time, Law argues, for us to take responsibility for our health, not as passive consumers of pharmaceutical medicine, but as informed citizens.
Jacky Law is a pharmaceutical journalist. For the past 25 years she has written about health issues. For seven years she worked as associate editor for Scrip magazine, a monthly international pharmaceutical title. She left in 2004 to write Big Pharma.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9781845291396 |
| ISBN 10 | 1845291395 |
| Title | Big Pharma |
| Author | Jacky Law |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Hardback |
| Publisher | Little, Brown Book Group |
| Year published | 2006-01-16 |
| Number of pages | 256 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |