#263: A Deep Dive on the Fraud, Deception, and Misdirection of Big Pharma with Dr. John Abramson

This episode is brought to you by BiOptimizers, InsideTracker, and Eight Sleep.

The United States spends an excess of $1.5 trillion annually on health care compared to other wealthy countries—yet the amount of time that Americans live in good health ranks at 68th in the world. At the heart of the problem is Big Pharma, which funds most clinical trials and therefore controls the research agenda, withholds the real data from those trials as corporate secrets, and shapes most of the information relied upon by health care professionals.

This week on The Dhru Purohit Podcast, Dhru sat down with Dr. John Abramson to talk about the inside story of how Big Pharma’s relentless pursuit of ever-higher profits corrupts medical knowledge—misleading doctors, misdirecting American health care, and harming our health.

Dr. Abramson is the author of the new book, Sickening, and has been on the faculty of Harvard Medical School for twenty-five years, where he teaches health care policy. He also served as a family physician for 22 years, during which he was named a “top doctor” six times in local, state, and national surveys. He served as an unpaid consultant to the FBI and Department of Justice, including in a case that resulted in the largest criminal fine in U.S. history. He is also the author of Overdo$ed America: The Broken Promise of American Medicine.

In this episode, we dive into: 

-Big Pharma’s best-kept secret (10:25)

-The first trial of a drug company found guilty of fraud and racketeering (25:34) 

-Insulin and the exploitation of diabetes (26:37) 

-The core relationship between pharmaceutical companies and doctors (27:39) 

-Understanding absolute risk vs. relative risk for pharmaceutical drugs (31:16)

-How data manipulation led to excess deaths from the drug Vioxx (40:39)

-Why pharmaceutical companies are able to skirt accountability (44:09) 

-Where the budget for the FDA to oversee human products comes from (49:52)

-Vaccines for children, boosters, political inputs, and FDA resignations (58:16)

-What we can do to actually change the system (1:24:00) 

This episode is brought to you by BiOptimizers, InsideTracker, and Eight Sleep.

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