GUNS, DRUGS, AND EUGENICS
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billion),β she states. βOver the past two decades, the pharmaceutical industry has moved very far from its original high purpose of discovering and producing useful new drugs. Now primarily a marketing machine to sell drugs of dubious benefit, this industry uses its wealth and power to co-opt every institution that might stand in its way, including the U.S. Congress, the FDA, academic medical centers, and the medical profession itself.β Dr. Angell, also author of the 2004 book The Truth About the Drug Companies: How They Deceive Us and What to Do About It brings focus to the argument that the current power of the pharmaceutical industry can be directly traced to its phenomenal growth during the Reagan years. βThe election of Ronald Reagan in 1980 was perhaps the fundamental element in the rapid rise of Big Pharmaβthe collective name for the largest drug companies,β wrote Angell. Dr. Angell and a number of others took note of a strong pro-business attitude shift during the Reagan-Bush yearsβnot just in government but within American society. There was a time in the not-so-distant past when educated persons of class looked upon commercial businessmen only slightly more kindly than they had once looked upon theater folk. They also had a slight disdain for enormous inherited wealth. Scientists, teachers, public servants such as firemen and policemen chose their careers for service and community-betterment rather than for lavish salaries and retirement benefits. But times and attitudes change. Today, the corporate mass media portrays the race for wealth as practically virtuous. The wealthy are considered winners while everyone else is a loser. βThe gap between the rich and poor, which had been narrowing since World War II, suddenly began to widen again, until today it is a chasm,β remarked Dr. Angell. She went on to say that before 1980, pharmaceuticals was a good business, but afterward, it was a stupendous one. From 1960 to 1980, prescription drug sales were fairly static as a percentage of U.S. gross domestic product, but from 1980 to 2000, they tripled. βThey now stand at more than $200 billion a year,β said Dr. Angell. βOf the many events that contributed to the industryβs great and good fortune, none had to do with the quality of the drugs the companies were selling.β The success of Big Pharma has more to do with marketing than with the