Prescription Games: Money, Ego, and Power Inside the Global Pharmeceutical Industry - Hardcover

Robinson, Jeffrey

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0771075669 ISBN 13: 9780771075667

Publisher: McClelland & Stewart, 2001

Synopsis

The major pharmaceutical companies, according to John le Carré – who has based his novel The Constant Gardener on their depredations – “are engaged in the systematic corruption of the medical profession, country by country.” Jeffrey Robinson can back up that charge.

In Prescription Games, Jeffrey Robinson exposes the yawning abyss between the claims to altruism made by pharmaceutical companies and the harsh reality of their everyday practice. When the industry claims that the enormous markup they charge for new drugs pays the cost of developing new ones, they don’t say that as much as 80 per cent of R&D money is actually directed at developing drugs designed to compete with existing brands, or at creating variations on drugs whose patents are about to expire – expenditures only the industry itself (and its shareholders) will benefit from.

Within the industry, there are “blockbuster” drugs that create vast wealth for the companies that manufacture them. Most are designed to treat conditions that are endemic among prosperous, western populations that can afford them. But there are no blockbuster drugs to treat diseases like tuberculosis, cholera, and malaria that ravage the Third World, because Third World countries can’t afford the prices. People in Africa and Asia die from new strains of tuberculosis while people in Europe and North America are offered expensive treatments for obesity, hair loss, and sexual dysfunction.

In this hard-hitting exposé, Robinson also examines the extension of patent protection, the end of generic drug competition in Canada, the Nancy Olivieri scandal (how a drug manufacturer fought to conceal research findings that would damage sales of its product), the illicit drug trade, and espionage among drug manufacturers.

About this title

About the Author

Jeffrey Robinson is the international bestselling American author of 17 books. His investigative books include The Laundrymen and The Merger: How Organized Crime is Taking Over Canada and the World. Robinson lives in Europe and is a frequent guest on television and radio talk shows on both sides of the Atlantic.

Edition details

• Publisher: McClelland & Stewart
• Publication date: 2001
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0771075669
• ISBN 13: 9780771075667
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 272