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Critics' Opinion:
Readers' Opinion:
First Published:
Oct 2005, 288 pages
Paperback:
Jan 2007, 320 pages
Book Reviewed by:
BookBrowse Review Team
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Generation Rx will make every American who has ever taken a prescription drug look anew at what's in our medicine cabinets, and why.
Greg Critser's brilliantly incisive Generation Rx moves the conversation about
prescription drugs to where it hits home: our own bodies. How, he asks, has
big pharma created a nation of pharmaceutical tribes, each with its own unique
beliefs, taboos, and brand loyalties? How have powerful chemical compounds for
chronic diseases, once controlled by physicians, become substances we feel
entitled to, whether we need them or not? How did we come to hate drug
companies but love their pills?
Read on in Generation Rx for: -- exclusive interviews with the strategists,
scientists, and current and former heads of GlaxoSmithKline, Eli Lilly, Merck,
Roche, and more -- a first-ever, inside look at the rollicking business story
behind pharma's rise to power -- the dramatic effects our drug culture is
having on our major organs, from the liver to the heart to the brain -- why
old bodies and young bodies are the biggest, and riskiest, arenas for our
great American prescription pill party -- how the largely uncharted terrain of
polypharmacy (various drugs taken together) has unleashed unanticipated, often
deadly, consequences on unwitting patients
Generation Rx will make every American who has ever taken a prescription
drug look anew at what's in our medicine cabinets, and why.
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. UNBOUND
The Strange and Very American Liberation of Big Pharma
2. WE LOVE IT!
How the New Pharma Used Its New Muscle to Create a New . . . You
3. THE FULL PRICE
What Living in Pharma's World Means for Our Bodies
4. THE END OF THE GREAT BUFFER?
Why We Are More Vulnerable
5. INDEPENDENCE FOR GENERATION RX
What Can Be Done
A Brief Guide to the Art of Taking Prescription Drugs
Notes
Index
Unbound
The Strange and Very American Liberation
of Big Pharma
THE MAN IN THE ARENA: WHY PHARMACEUTICAL
COMPANIES
BECAME SO AGGRESSIVE
In the world of bureaucratic Washington, D.C., few if any possess the gravitas and smarts to get away with quoting Teddy Roosevelt. Lewis Engman, Richard Nixon's 1973 appointee as chairman of the powerful Federal Trade Commission (FTC), was one of the few. A ...
If you're looking for a light, easy to digest read you may find Generation Rx provides more information than you want to know. However, if you really want to understand the American pharmaceutical business and its effects on the American people, stop right here and read the very extensive excerpt at BookBrowse, which is not only interesting in its own right but will give you a good flavor of the book as a whole..continued
Full Review
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(Reviewed by BookBrowse Review Team).
Did you know?
(According to Generation Rx)
The average number of
prescriptions per person per year
soared from 7 in 1993, to 12 in 2004.
According to the American Society of Clinical Pharmacologists, in 2000 27% of elderly patients received 9+ medications (compared to 17% in 1997).
The amount spent to advertise
prescription drugs directly to
consumers in 2004 was $4.45 billion (up from $2m in 1980) .
The number of Americans who annually
request and receive a prescription
for a specific drug after seeing a commercial is 8.5 million.
...
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