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Generation Rx: How Prescription Drugs Are Altering American Lives, Minds, and Bodies

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Manufacturer: Mariner Books

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Greg Critser's brilliantly incisive Generation Rx shows how shockingly little we know about the prescription drugs we take and the hazards they may pose to our health. Americans are prescribed more drugs today than ever before, and the pharmaceutical industry has gained tremendous financial power and political clout. Drawing on exclusive access to the strategists, scientists, and current and former heads of GlaxoSmithKline, Eli Lilly, Merck, and other drug giants, Critser chronicles the transformation of big pharma from onetime lumbering medical conglomerate to media-savvy consumer enterprise. He also reveals the direct and indirect consequences for our health, among them increased incidence of damage to major organs, unprecedented medication use by the very young and very old, and the emergence of polypharmacy, in which various drugs taken together can unleash unanticipated, and often deadly, effects.

Generation Rx urges all of us to think about the price we pay, as a society and with our own bodies, for our chronic use of prescription drugs.


PRODUCT DESCRIPTIONS:

Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 338.476151
EAN: 9780618773565
ISBN: 0618773568
Label: Mariner Books
Manufacturer: Mariner Books
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 308
Publication Date: 2007-01-05
Publisher: Mariner Books
Studio: Mariner Books


SIMILAR ITEMS:

• Selling Sickness: How the World's Biggest Pharmaceutical Companies Are Turning Us All Into Patients
• Overdosed America: The Broken Promise of American Medicine (P.S.)
• Fat Land: How Americans Became the Fattest People in the World (Edition 001)
• The Truth About the Drug Companies: How They Deceive Us and What to Do About It
• On the Take: How Medicine's Complicity with Big Business Can Endanger Your Health


CUSTOMER REVIEWS:

Especially for those in a medical field -
Everyone should read this book. It opens your eyes to what goes on behind the scenes of the pharmaceutical industry and the aspects of direct to consumer advertising of medications. This will encourage people to question their doctors and force them to use their knowledge instead of following the bribes drug reps give them. This book also teaches us to trust our pharmacists and make use of their offer to counsel. This book could change the health care industry for the better.

Articulate and Insightful -
Here, as in his FAT LAND, Critser performs a public service in the best possible format. Major issues like the growth of the drug culture are usually presented with more technical detail than the non-specialist can stand or with lurid alarmism. Here Critser condenses huge amounts of data and first hand research in a prose that is both lucid and interesting. In a country where every other ad is for a drug, each citizen should read this exciting volume.

The Rx syndrome: -
GenerationRx is extremely informative and a fine introduction to the manner in which prescription drugs have moved to the fore through media advertising. Chapters seem endless but persistence is well worth the effort. The second half of the book becomes increasingly practical. The concluding advice and the listed web sites are well worth the investment.

Much Better Books Are Available! -
Generation Rx" begins by musing over an article in the House and Home section of the New York Times reporting the rise in popularity of "triple-wide" medicine cabinets - taller, wider, and deeper. Cause of this phenomena - the average number of prescriptions/person was 7/year in '93, 11 in '00, and 12 in '04 - despite enormous uncertainty about their benefits and safety. (There are an estimated 106,000 deaths/year from serious adverse drug reactions from just those properly diagnosed and taken. Drug-induced liver disease is the most common cause of acute liver failure - more than viral hepatitis.)

A major source of this growth is the increased amount spent to advertise prescription drugs to consumer - from $2 million in '80 to $4.4 billion in '04. Protecting these investments and sales is an additional one-half billion/year spent lobbying by pharmaceutical firms.

So much for the interesting part. The vast bulk of "Generation Rx" is a rambling series of anecdotes guaranteed to put the reader to sleep. I instead would recommend "The Truth About Drug Companies," and "Overdosed America" - both written by eminent physicians.

A History and Critique of Pharma "Tribal Marketing" -
Greg Crister, in his new book, Generation Rx: How Prescription Drugs Are Altering American Lives, Minds, and Bodies, puts forth the notion that "big pharma" has created a nation of pharmaceutical tribes, each with its own unique beliefs, taboos, and brand loyalties. According to Crister, there are 3 such tribes:

1. Tribe of High-Performance Youth: children and adolescents who are medicated for depression, attention deficit disorder, and a range of other psychological and behavioral problems mostly because of "their parents' completely under-standable wish that they perform well in a society of ever increasing demands to perform well, nay, superbly."

2. Tribe of Productivity and Comfort (MiddleYears): those of us at the middle-to-late points in our careers as parents and/or earners who are preprogrammed to consume drugs like Lipitor, Viagra, Prozac, and Prilosec, to "shore up our ability to produce more and better and to relieve discomfit, including the discomfit of having to watch what and how much we eat and drink and of sitting on our duff."

3. Tribe of High-Performance Aging: seniors who take drugs "not only to alleviate the discomfit of aging, but also to extend their lives."

Crister credits Pat Kelly, president of U.S. Pharmaceuticals for Pfizer, for inspiring the idea of consumer tribalism-pharma's need to sell lifestyle, not things. "By conjuring brand tribalism-an intense, interactive, and information-driven promotion of a product and the values it is made to seem to embody-a company can not only gain new customers, but also hold on to the old ones," says Crister.

According to Crister, before big pharmaceutical companies could create these tribes to consume their drugs, they had to become "unbound" from government restrictions. Crister devotes about 100 pages-38% of the book-to a history of how direct-to-consumer (DTC) advertising became legal is the U.S.

I found this to be the most interesting part of the book because of the first-hand accounts of people who played critical roles in making DTC advertising possible. Some of these "DTC pioneers" are still part of the pharmaceutical advertising scene today. Also, I know some of these people personally, which makes reading the story all the more interesting. Crister's account-which I have no reason to believe is inaccurate (the book is chuck full of references)-gave me insight into the backgrounds of these pioneers and how they got to where they are today.

Crister seems to have had unusual access to the principals-including pharmaceutical executives-involved. He peppers his story with many quotes and colorful phrases based on these interviews. Although I am happy that these people's stories have been told in their own words, some of these words have been used to make Crister's case against the industry.

There are a few juicy anti-DTC quotes from pharma execs in the book. Although the execs made these statements prior to DTC becoming legals, twenty-five years later and with eight years of DTC experience, the industry is still confronted by critics regarding DTC's cost, educational effectiveness, and ability to present risk information. For a review of these issues, see my article, "DTC Pros and Cons Presented at FDA Hearing," in Pharma Marketing News (www.pharmamarketingnews.com).

Crister, of course, has an axe to grind with the pharmaceutical industry and offers up the same criticisms of pharma marketing practices as did many other critics before him. His distinction, however, is the colorful and amusing language he uses. Here's a sampling in no particular logical order:

* On blockbuster drugs: "By late 2004, blockbusterism, the jumbo golden Rx goose, seemed to have laid its last egg."
* On CME: "The Demi Moore of this lap dance is CME."
* On Gen-X marketing: "The synergy marketers boogied at full tilt." I am still not sure what he means by that.
* On the liver: "the canary in the mineshaft of Generation Rx."
* On patients as consumers: "a person with medical needs" these days acts "as if he is not going to the doctor but rather to the mall." Crister's main reform idea is that patients should stop thinking of themselves as consumers and that we all should cut down our own use of prescription drugs. Not a bad suggestion, but utter radicalism to some pharmaceutical marketers.
* On the Pharmaceutical Marketing Congress: "the world's fair of pharmaceutical marketing."
* On Pat Kelly, president of U.S. Pharmaceuticals for Pfizer: "unquestionably, the definitive lead guitar player in the rocking world of modern drug marketing."
* On physician detailing: "more of a pharmaceutical lap dance than, like, and old-fashioned sales call." For more on the relation of sex and sales reps, see Pharma Marketing Blog ("Sexy Reps Sell Rx"; www.pharmamarketingblog.com).
* On polypharmacy: "in that regard most drug companies have been as responsible as a thirsty sailor in port after a year at sea." He said "thirsty," but I am sure he meant "horny."

Aside from the seminal events described above, Crister also recounts the history of many other "firsts" in DTC, including the first DTC ad that mentioned a drug by name and, afterward, the first non-branded, help-seeking ad that was designed to "drive patients to their doctors." I'll leave it up to you to read the book if you want to learn more about these events.

I will also leave it up to you to read the book for Crister's solutions, which appear to be the usual ones suggested by other critics. Crister does suggest something unique: get a healthy life in order to "pharmaproof" yourself.

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