Page 75 - Summer2009

All Thumbs Book Reviews

Our Daily Meds: How the Pharmaceutical Petersen pounds home the personal, indi-
Companies Transformed Themselves into vidual cost of medical care because once she
Slick Marketing Machines and Hooked the EHJLQV WR UHSRUW RQ WKH SUR¿WV RI WKH SKDUPDFHXWL-
Nation on Prescription Drugs cal industry, the numbers soon reach proportions
By Melody Petersen that can no longer easily be held in one’s head. In
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2008 1980, Americans spent $12 billion on prescrip-
WLRQ GUXJV %\ WKDW ¿JXUH KDG ULVHQ WR
One way to assess the current state of health billion. In the same time period Americans had
care in the United States is to look back just a doubled what they paid for cars, and tripled what
couple of decades to world longevity statistics. they paid for clothing, but their spending on phar-
$ VL[W\ ¿YH \HDU ROG $PHULFDQ ZRPDQ LQ maceuticals had increased seventeen times.
could expect to enjoy a longer life span than Then there is another personal cost paid
could her contemporary in most other places in every day by Americans who are the customers
WKH ZRUOG %\ KRZHYHU D VL[W\ ¿YH \HDU of the pharmaceutical industry. In 2006, accord-
old woman, with access to the nearly unlimited ing to Petersen, the average American collected
supply of the newest and most expensive drugs twelve prescriptions; the average senior citizen
the American pharmaceutical industry has to WRRN KRPH PRUH WKDQ WKLUW\ $QG WRGD\ QHDUO\
offer, had slipped from her comfortable spot percent of the entire American population daily
in expected life expectancy. Among longevity takes at least one prescription medication.“There
spans determined for thirty countries in that is a problem, however,” Petersen goes on, “. . . one
year, the American woman would come in sev- that the drug companies and doctors prescribing
enteenth. American men have fared even worse, the medicines do not like to talk about. Experts
DQG D VL[W\ ¿YH \HDU ROG $PHULFDQ PDQ WRGD\ estimate that more than one hundred thousand
can expect a shorter life than a man his age in Americans die each year not from illness but
Mexico. from their prescription drugs. Those deaths,
Melody Petersen presents these statistics occurring quietly, almost without notice in hos-
in Our Daily Meds as one means of examining pitals, emergency rooms, and homes, make medi-
WKH SXUSRUWHG YDOXH RI WKH ÀRRG RI SUHVFULSWLRQ cines one of the leading causes of death in the
PHGLFLQHV HQJXO¿QJ WKH $PHULFDQ SXEOLF 1R United States. . . . Prescription medicines, taken Experts
one can seem to account for the dismal showing according to doctors’ instructions, kill more estimate that
of Americans in international longevity com- Americans than either diabetes or Alzheimer’s more than
parisons, she points out, even though the United disease.” On a daily basis that is two-hundred-
States spends more per person on medical care VHYHQW\ SHRSOH²RQH HYHU\ ¿YH PLQXWHV²NLOOHG one hundred
than any other nation on earth. How much more? by prescription drugs. thousand
More than do all the people of Japan, Germany, Could these deaths and serious injuries pos- Americans die
France, Italy, Spain, the United Kingdom, Aus- sibly be one reason the nation’s longevity ranking
tralia, New Zealand, Canada, Mexico, Brazil and has plummeted? each year not
Argentina combined ,Q WKDW ZDV DQ DYHU- Hand in hand with these dismal facts of from illness
age of $6,700 for each person per year; $26,800 death and destruction wreaked by prescription but from their
for a household of four. More money than was drugs comes what is really a macabre American
spent on housing, food, transportation, or any- success story. All that aggressive marketing prescription
thing else. works, for which Petersen repeatedly offers drugs.

SUMMER 2009 Wise Traditions 73