Unavailable
Unavailable
Unavailable
Ebook714 pages11 hours
Powerful Medicines: The Benefits, Risks, and Costs of Prescription Drugs
Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars
4.5/5
()
Currently unavailable
Currently unavailable
About this ebook
If you believe that the latest blockbuster medication is worth a premium price over your generic brand, or that doctors have access to all the information they need about a drug’s safety and effectiveness each time they write a prescription, Dr. Jerry Avorn has some sobering news. Drawing on more than twenty-five years of patient care, teaching, and research at Harvard Medical School, he shares his firsthand experience of the wide gap in our knowledge of the effectiveness of one medication as compared to another. In Powerful Medicines, he reminds us that every pill we take represents a delicate compromise between the promise of healing, the risk of side effects, and an increasingly daunting price. The stakes on each front grow higher every year as new drugs with impressive power, worrisome side effects, and troubling costs are introduced.
This is a comprehensive behind-the-scenes look at issues that affect everyone: our shortage of data comparing the worth of similar drugs for the same condition; alarming lapses in the detection of lethal side effects; the underuse of life-saving medications; lavish marketing campaigns that influence what doctors prescribe; and the resulting upward spiral of costs that places vital drugs beyond the reach of many Americans.
In this engagingly written book, Dr. Avorn asks questions that will interest every consumer: How can a product judged safe by the Food and Drug Administration turn out to have unexpectedly lethal side effects? Why has the nation’s drug bill been growing at nearly 20 percent per year? How can physicians and patients pick the best medication in its class? How do doctors actually make their prescribing decisions, and why do those decisions sometimes go wrong? Why do so many Americans suffer preventable illnesses and deaths that proper drug use could have averted? How can the nation gain control over its escalating drug budget without resorting to rationing or draconian governmental controls?
Using clinical case histories taken from his own work as a practitioner, researcher, and advocate, Dr. Avorn demonstrates the impressive power of the well-conceived prescription as well as the debacles that can result when medications are misused. He describes an innovative program that employs the pharmaceutical industry’s own marketing techniques to reduce use of some of the most overprescribed and overpriced products. Powerful Medicines offers timely and practical advice on how the nation can improve its drug-approval process, and how patients can work with doctors to make sure their prescriptions are safe, effective, and as affordable as possible.
This is a passionate and provocative call for action as well as a compelling work of clear-headed science.
This is a comprehensive behind-the-scenes look at issues that affect everyone: our shortage of data comparing the worth of similar drugs for the same condition; alarming lapses in the detection of lethal side effects; the underuse of life-saving medications; lavish marketing campaigns that influence what doctors prescribe; and the resulting upward spiral of costs that places vital drugs beyond the reach of many Americans.
In this engagingly written book, Dr. Avorn asks questions that will interest every consumer: How can a product judged safe by the Food and Drug Administration turn out to have unexpectedly lethal side effects? Why has the nation’s drug bill been growing at nearly 20 percent per year? How can physicians and patients pick the best medication in its class? How do doctors actually make their prescribing decisions, and why do those decisions sometimes go wrong? Why do so many Americans suffer preventable illnesses and deaths that proper drug use could have averted? How can the nation gain control over its escalating drug budget without resorting to rationing or draconian governmental controls?
Using clinical case histories taken from his own work as a practitioner, researcher, and advocate, Dr. Avorn demonstrates the impressive power of the well-conceived prescription as well as the debacles that can result when medications are misused. He describes an innovative program that employs the pharmaceutical industry’s own marketing techniques to reduce use of some of the most overprescribed and overpriced products. Powerful Medicines offers timely and practical advice on how the nation can improve its drug-approval process, and how patients can work with doctors to make sure their prescriptions are safe, effective, and as affordable as possible.
This is a passionate and provocative call for action as well as a compelling work of clear-headed science.
Unavailable
Related to Powerful Medicines
Related ebooks
The Risks of Prescription Drugs Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsPharmacopolitics: Drug Regulation in the United States and Germany Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsOverdosed America: The Broken Promise of American Medicine Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Pills, Profits, and Politics Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Future of Drug Discovery: Who Decides Which Diseases to Treat? Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsPharma and Profits: Balancing Innovation, Medicine, and Drug Prices Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsDisease, Diagnoses, and Dollars: Facing the Ever-Expanding Market for Medical Care Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBottle of Lies: The Inside Story of the Generic Drug Boom Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5When Experiments Travel: Clinical Trials and the Global Search for Human Subjects Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5From Outside Looking Further Out: Essays on Current Issues in Medical Care Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSurviving Cancer, COVID-19, and Disease: The Repurposed Drug Revolution Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsChemicals, Cancer, and Choices: Risk Reduction Through Markets Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSickening: How Big Pharma Broke American Health Care and How We Can Repair It Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Bad Pharma: How Drug Companies Mislead Doctors and Harm Patients Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Primal Panacea Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsNothing Is Risk-Free in Health Care: A Handbook for Patients Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsWho Goes First?: The Story of Self-Experimentation in Medicine Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsUr-ine Trouble Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsPrecision Medicine and the Reinvention of Human Disease Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHazardous to Our Health?: FDA Regulation of Health Care Products Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Price of Health: The Modern Pharmaceutical Enterprise and the Betrayal of a History of Care Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Longevity Revolution TV: Channel Guide Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsQuackonomics!: The Cost of Unscientific Health Care in the U.S. ...and Other Fraud Found Along the Way Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsPrescription for the People: An Activist’s Guide to Making Medicine Affordable for All Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsDrug Interactions in Infectious Diseases: Mechanisms and Models of Drug Interactions Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsPatient Z Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Definitive Cure for Cancer Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsLife-Long Health: Learn How to Control Your Genes to Stay Young With Age Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Medical For You
The Vagina Bible: The Vulva and the Vagina: Separating the Myth from the Medicine Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Brain on Fire: My Month of Madness Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5What Happened to You?: Conversations on Trauma, Resilience, and Healing Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Mating in Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Gut: The Inside Story of Our Body's Most Underrated Organ (Revised Edition) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The People's Hospital: Hope and Peril in American Medicine Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Women With Attention Deficit Disorder: Embrace Your Differences and Transform Your Life Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Song of the Cell: An Exploration of Medicine and the New Human Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Big Fat Surprise: Why Butter, Meat and Cheese Belong in a Healthy Diet Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Adult ADHD: How to Succeed as a Hunter in a Farmer's World Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Mediterranean Diet Meal Prep Cookbook: Easy And Healthy Recipes You Can Meal Prep For The Week Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5As Nature Made Him: The Boy Who Was Raised as a Girl Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Diabetes Code: Prevent and Reverse Type 2 Diabetes Naturally Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5WomanCode: Perfect Your Cycle, Amplify Your Fertility, Supercharge Your Sex Drive, and Become a Power Source Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5"Cause Unknown": The Epidemic of Sudden Deaths in 2021 & 2022 Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Living Daily With Adult ADD or ADHD: 365 Tips o the Day Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Hidden Lives: True Stories from People Who Live with Mental Illness Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Holistic Herbal: A Safe and Practical Guide to Making and Using Herbal Remedies Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Herbal Healing for Women Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The 40 Day Dopamine Fast Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Art of Dying Well: A Practical Guide to a Good End of Life Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Peptide Protocols: Volume One Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Tight Hip Twisted Core: The Key To Unresolved Pain Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Summary of Dr. Gundry's Diet Evolution: Turn off the Genes That Are Killing You and Your Waistline Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5
Reviews for Powerful Medicines
Rating: 4.642857285714285 out of 5 stars
4.5/5
7 ratings1 review
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Avorn has put together an amazing explanation of how the pharmaceutical industry, physicians, and government don't work together in the United States. The most shocking part was that drug companies pay to collect data on what doctor is prescribing what to who. I would have thought that HIPAA covered patients here, but apparently not.