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Dr. John Abramson's Expose of Drug and Insurance Company Abuses
In his book, "Overdosed America: The broken promise of American medicine," Dr. Abramson explains how drug and insurance giants controlled US health care after the Reagan administration transformed an essential need into a commodity as follows:
-- by massively reducing federal funding for independent medical research and mediation trials;
-- forcing researchers to be funded by the drug giants;
-- corrupting the whole system for profit, including some medical journals accepting funding in return for publishing industry-friendly studies on new drugs, other products, and treatments; for example, a New England Journal of Medicine report claimed Vioxx was safer than earlier NSAIDs when no such evidence existed; as worrisome, doctors are trained to use medical journal data in treating patients;
-- in 1991, 80% of clinical trials took place at universities with considerable private funding but some academic oversight; by 2000, universities conducted only 34% of trials;
-- more than ever, drug companies design and control trials of their own products to hide unfavorable findings and promote positive ones; in addition, test results are private and unavailable to the public on the pretext they'll compromise proprietary secrets beneficial to competitors; as a result, peer review is impossible and dangerous drugs are made available for sale; and
-- one study found that industry-run clinical trials are 5.3 times more likely to be positive than independent or public ones.
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