A blistering, persuasive critique of the harms done when drug companies hide the truth about their drugs.
A family physician and Harvard Medical School lecturer exposes the sordid tactics big pharma uses to jack up drug prices and con doctors about the facts they need to provide good care.
Abramson makes a powerful case that, over the past 40 years, profiteering drug companies have played an outsized role in two crises: the soaring costs of health care and America’s plunging “healthy life expectancy,” ranked 68th in the world in 2019. Linking the problem to a corporate shift to chasing profitability untethered from social responsibility, the author shows how corporations have hijacked sources of information doctors once could trust, such as medical journals, educational conferences, and lectures. The corruption began in the 1990s, when drug companies took control of clinical trials from academic medical centers; 6 out of 7 trials are now funded commercially by sponsors who have no obligation to show their data to medical journals. In an especially alarming chapter, Abramson shows how repeated changes in insulin have made it vastly more expensive for people with diabetes with little—if any—benefit. Companies have also withheld or manipulated facts about statins and popular drugs like Trulicity and Humira, which costs $78,000 per year. “Humira became by far the best-selling drug in the United States,” writes the author, “despite the fact that the manufacturer’s own study showed that it was no more effective as a first-line therapy for rheumatoid arthritis than methotrexate, which costs 99.5 percent less than Humira.” Abramson proposes worthy long-term solutions to the crisis, such as transparency about clinical trial results. But this book, the best on prescription drugs since Katherine Eban’s Bottle of Lies (2019), should also have high short-term value for patients, whom it might embolden to question their doctors more aggressively about whether there’s an equally effective substitute for a drug with a sky-high price tag.
A blistering, persuasive critique of the harms done when drug companies hide the truth about their drugs.Pub Date: Feb. 8, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-328-95781-8
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Mariner Books
Review Posted Online: Dec. 9, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2022
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.
“Quality of life means more than just consumption”: Two MIT economists urge that a smarter, more politically aware economics be brought to bear on social issues.
It’s no secret, write Banerjee and Duflo (co-authors: Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way To Fight Global Poverty, 2011), that “we seem to have fallen on hard times.” Immigration, trade, inequality, and taxation problems present themselves daily, and they seem to be intractable. Economics can be put to use in figuring out these big-issue questions. Data can be adduced, for example, to answer the question of whether immigration tends to suppress wages. The answer: “There is no evidence low-skilled migration to rich countries drives wage and employment down for the natives.” In fact, it opens up opportunities for those natives by freeing them to look for better work. The problem becomes thornier when it comes to the matter of free trade; as the authors observe, “left-behind people live in left-behind places,” which explains why regional poverty descended on Appalachia when so many manufacturing jobs left for China in the age of globalism, leaving behind not just left-behind people but also people ripe for exploitation by nationalist politicians. The authors add, interestingly, that the same thing occurred in parts of Germany, Spain, and Norway that fell victim to the “China shock.” In what they call a “slightly technical aside,” they build a case for addressing trade issues not with trade wars but with consumption taxes: “It makes no sense to ask agricultural workers to lose their jobs just so steelworkers can keep theirs, which is what tariffs accomplish.” Policymakers might want to consider such counsel, especially when it is coupled with the observation that free trade benefits workers in poor countries but punishes workers in rich ones.
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-61039-950-0
Page Count: 432
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: Aug. 28, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
A powerful reiteration of principles—and some fresh ideas—from the longest-serving independent in congressional history.
Another chapter in a long fight against inequality.
Building on his Fighting Oligarchy tour, which this year drew 280,000 people to rallies in red and blue states, Sanders amplifies his enduring campaign for economic fairness. The Vermont senator offers well-timed advice for combating corruption and issues a robust plea for national soul-searching. His argument rests on alarming data on the widening wealth gap’s impact on democracy. Bolstered by a 2010 Supreme Court decision that removed campaign finance limits, “100 billionaire families spent $2.6 billion” on 2024 elections. Sanders focuses on the Trump administration and congressional Republicans, describing their enactment of the “Big Beautiful Bill,” with its $1 trillion in tax breaks for the richest Americans and big social safety net cuts, as the “largest transfer of wealth” in living memory. But as is his custom, he spreads the blame, dinging Democrats for courting wealthy donors while ignoring the “needs and suffering” of the working class. “Trump filled the political vacuum that the Democrats created,” he writes, a resonant diagnosis. Urging readers not to surrender to despair, Sanders offers numerous legislative proposals. These would empower labor unions, cut the workweek to 32 hours, regulate campaign spending, reduce gerrymandering, and automatically register 18-year-olds to vote. Grassroots supporters can help by running for local office, volunteering with a campaign, and asking educators how to help support public schools. Meanwhile, Sanders asks us “to question the fundamental moral values that underlie” a system that enables “the top 1 percent” to “own more wealth than the bottom 93 percent.” Though his prose sometimes reads like a transcribed speech with built-in applause lines, Sanders’ ideas are specific, clear, and commonsensical. And because it echoes previous statements, his call for collective introspection lands as genuine.
A powerful reiteration of principles—and some fresh ideas—from the longest-serving independent in congressional history.Pub Date: Oct. 21, 2025
ISBN: 9798217089161
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Oct. 21, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2025
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