A lot of the public doesn’t realize how sophisticated the [pharmaceutical industry's] marketing techniques have become, really over the last 10 years… Essentially when a pharmaceutical company gets FDA approval for a drug, their marketing department can assure their bosses that they are going to be able to sell the drug, really whether the drug is effective or not.
Dr. Daniel Carlat, psychiatrist
Fresh Air, July 13, 2010
Emphasis in the final sentence is mine.
Dr. Carlat’s current book is Unhinged: The Trouble with Psychiatry – A Doctor’s Revelations about a Profession in Crisis. He was previously the author of a 2007 New York Times Magazine article entitled “Dr. Drug Rep,” about his experience being paid by Wyeth Pharmaceuticals to sing the praises of its anti-depressant Effexor to his colleagues; he also talks about it at length in the Fresh Air interview.
Carlat is a psychiatrist in private practice in Newburyport, Massachusetts, an Associate Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at Tufts University School of Medicine, and the publisher of The Carlat Psychiatry Report. Oh, and he’s also a blogger. How he is all of these things at once I cannot fucking imagine.
Tags: Big Pharma, bullshit, Fresh Air, health care, NPR, psychiatry
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