Health
What You Can Do
We now have the opportunity to powerfully work together to
strengthen democracy and to build a better world by spreading the news on
the health cover-up far and wide. As we develop a critical mass of concerned citizens who demand to know the
truth, the media will be forced to cover these issues more thoroughly. Then
we will begin to see powerful, positive changes in the world.
We invite you to
join in spreading this news and making a difference in several ways. You can copy and paste the
health cover-up message below to any Internet message boards or discussion
groups in which you are involved. To contact your political representatives and the media, click here. To post to Wikipedia, click here. If you have a website, we invite you
to set up a link to our Health Information Center at
http://www.WantToKnow.info/healthinformation. You can also print
our two-page and ten-page summaries directly from the website and share them
widely.
Help
spread the news on the health cover-up around the world by sending emails
to your friends and colleagues and inviting them to pass the message on.
You can copy and paste
the message below to your email. Feel free to adapt or modify this message
in any way. For other ways that you can help, click
here. By taking advantage of the powerful tools of email and the Internet,
we are building a better world.
Affecting Your
Health: Renowned MD Exposes Major Drug Company Cover-up
As
the former editor
in chief of one of the world's most prestigious medical journals, The
New England Journal of Medicine, Marcia Angell, M.D. is eminently qualified
to expose disturbing secrets of the highly profitable pharmaceutical industry
which affect your health. The esteemed Dr. Angell has now written a revealing
book titled The Truth About the Drug Companies, which clearly depicts
how greed and secrecy have compromised both your health and budget, and the
health and budget of our nation and world. This landmark book received
the following rave reviews:
Washington
Post: "Always authoritative...[this book] delivers the message—that
drug-company money and power is corrupting American medicine—in a convincing,
no-nonsense manner."
Boston
Globe: "A sober, clear-eyed attack on the excesses of drug company power...a
lucid, persuasive, and highly important book."
New
York Times: "A scorching indictment of drug companies and their research
and business practices...tough, persuasive and troubling."
Providing
the hard evidence backed up with hundreds of excellent footnotes and empowering
suggestions on what we can do, Dr. Angell's book is a must read for all who
care about the future of our health. Below are a few key quotes from a summary
of this eye-opening book in the New
York Review of Books:
"[In
2002] the combined profits for the ten drug companies in the Fortune 500 were
more than the profits for all the other 490 businesses put together. Over
the past two decades the pharmaceutical industry has moved very far from its
original high purpose of discovering and producing useful new drugs. Now primarily
a marketing machine to sell drugs of dubious benefit, this industry uses its
wealth and power to co-opt every institution that might stand in its way,
including the US Congress, the FDA, academic medical centers, and the medical
profession itself."
"The
great majority of 'new' drugs are not new at all but merely variations of
older drugs already on the market. These are called 'me-too' drugs. The idea
is to grab a share of an established, lucrative market by producing something
very similar to a top-selling drug. As Dr. Sharon Levine, associate executive
director of the Kaiser Permanente Medical Group, put it: 'If I'm a manufacturer
and I can change one molecule and get another twenty years of patent rights,
and convince physicians to prescribe and consumers to demand the next form
of Prilosec just as my patent expires, then why would I be spending money
on a lot less certain endeavor, which is looking for brand-new drugs?'"
"Of the
78 drugs approved by the FDA in 2002, only 17 contained new active ingredients,
and only seven of these were classified by the FDA as improvements over older
drugs. The other 71 drugs approved that year were variations of old drugs
or deemed no better than drugs already on the market. In other words, they
were me-too drugs."
"The
Medicare prescription drug benefit enacted in 2003, and scheduled to go into
effect in 2006, promises a windfall for big pharma since it forbids the government
from negotiating prices. The immediate jump in pharmaceutical stock prices
after the bill passed indicated that the industry and investors were well
aware of the windfall."
"Drug
companies have the largest lobby in Washington, and they give copiously to
political campaigns. Legislators are now so beholden to the pharmaceutical
industry that it will be exceedingly difficult to break its lock on them.
But the one thing legislators need more than campaign contributions is votes.
That is why citizens should know what is really going on. Contrary to the
industry's public relations, they don't get what they pay for. The fact is
that this industry is taking us for a ride, and there will be no real reform
without an aroused and determined public to make it happen."
For
a concise two-page review of Dr. Angell's The Truth About the Drug Companies,
see http://www.WantToKnow.info/healthcoverup
Or explore our information-packed ten-page summary at http://www.WantToKnow.info/truthaboutdrugcompanies
which includes footnotes with links. For an abundance of other reliable resources
on the health cover-up, visit our Health
Information Center. If the facts in these documents were reported in headline
news where they belong, caring citizens would be astounded and demand to know
more. This has not happened, which is why we feel compelled to provide them
here.
To
understand more about the impact of all this, go to http://www.WantToKnow.info The
entire website is dedicated both to providing a concise, reliable introduction
to incredibly important information that is being hidden from us, and
to inspiring us to work together to strengthen democracy and to build a better
world. You can help to build
a brighter future now by educating yourself on these vital issues,
and by forwarding this message to your friends and colleagues and asking them
to do the same. Thank you for caring. Together we can and will build a better
world for ourselves and our children.
The WantToKnow.info
team is a group of dedicated researchers from around the world who compile
and summarize important, verifiable facts and information being hidden from
the public. You can reach us by visiting http://www.WantToKnow.info/contactus.php.
Health
