Big Bucks, Big Pharma: Marketing Disease & Pushing Drugs

http://www.mediaed.org

Big Bucks, Big Pharma pulls back the curtain on the multi-billion dollar pharmaceutical industry to expose the insidious ways that illness is used, manipulated, and in some instances created, for capital gain. Focusing on the industry's marketing practices, media scholars and health professionals help viewers understand the ways in which direct-to-consumer (DTC) pharmaceutical advertising glamorizes and normalizes the use of prescription medication, and works in tandem with promotion to doctors. Combined, these industry practices shape how both patients and doctors understand and relate to disease and treatment. Ultimately, Big Bucks, Big Pharma challenges us to ask important questions about the consequences of relying on a for-profit industry for our health and well-being.

Featuring interviews with Dr. Marcia Angell (Dept. of Social Medicine, Harvard Medical School; Former Editor New England Journal of Medicine), Dr. Bob Goodman (Columbia University Medical Center; Founder, No Free Lunch), Gene Carbona (Former Pharmaceutical Industry Insider and Current Executive Director of Sales, The Medical Letter), Katharine Greider (Journalist; Author, The Big Fix: How the Pharmaceutical Industry Rips Off American Consumers,), Dr. Elizabeth Preston (Dept. of Communication, Westfield State College), and Dr. Larry Sasich (Public Citizen Health Research Group).

• Category

  News & Politics

[Lathox]

It's not supposed to work that way. You go to your doctor when you have symptoms. Then your doctor tells you if you need anything or not. You don't go to your doctor saying "Hey can I have this drug?". It's stupid.

[TheNaturalWoman]

When many think of drug dealers, they think of shadowy characters in alleys and ghettoes. Big Pharma (collectively) is the real drug dealers, receiving billions in bottom-line profits on a quarterly basis...and they are doing it legally.

[anarkimyst]

No doubt, use what is available but if the disease state is treatable you would give the person herbs and vitamins and tell them to pray to magic crystals or some random jazz. What kind of "physician" are you, anyways? Also, a chiropractor is not a physician - sorry to dash your hopes.

[platypusmaximus]

If you had pancreatic carcinoma with metastasis to the liver, and the hospital sends you home "...to live your last 6 months...", you would be very fortunate and wise to open your mind. There are ways you normally do not hear about, but people are benefiting from it everyday. A physician uses WHATEVER will help the person in need, while causing the least amount of harm/side effects. I believe if you were in a dis-ease state, you would want a doc who was open minded to ALL possible solutions.

[anarkimyst]

You sound like a junk science "physician" that would treat melanoma with herbs and vitamins and wonder why it progresses. 

[platypusmaximus]

I am a physician, but I cannot save humanity. Humanity must change what is in their hearts before their situation will change. I offer, in my practice, a comfortable environment where patients lead their care including non-drug solutions while I serve as the expert in helping to facilitate the proper direction. You must not be aware of the intimate relationship between pharma and the FDA/CDC/NCI/NIM/ACS. Pharma execs go back and forth between govt posts and drug exec jobs. Study some history.

[tommieparch]

Dont give us the FDA shit! They are a bunch of pushers that give the o.k. on bad drugs!! smoke some weed!... I was on 10 meds & now with the help of my alternative (non greedy) dr, Im on 3! ..dont be fooled....T

[anarkimyst]

Stick with your diet dipshit, i'll take regular food, thanks.

[anarkimyst]

I'm sure they did.

How about this - look up Cansema. One of our chemo patients decided to forgo chemo with at least a 95% success rate for his type of melanoma. He was not metastatic at the time and didn't like the idea of unnatural drugs being put in him... which is absurd since we get most drugs from nature in the first place. He chose cansema and tried it for a few months. He's now metastatic and has a 2 year life expectancy of close to 10% or as he said "stupid &dead".

[LucaBlightBadass]

Thats cause of diet dipshit!!!

[Meghan Terrell]

people use to live up to 900 years old