"David" Meets "Goliath"

Last night on Bill Moyers Journal Bill interviewed Melody Petersen. Petersen is a reporter for the New York Times who covered the drug industry for four years, winning one of the highest honors in business journalism--the Gerald Loeb Award. Then she spent another four years researching and writing the book Our Daily Meds: How the Pharmaceutical Companies Transformed Themselves Into Slick Marketing Machines and Hooked the Nation On Prescription Drugs.

When Petersen started to write about the pharmaceutical companies she didn't know a thing about the drug companies and actually thought that they were a lot about science. After all, that's what they were telling the public. Yet, Petersen came to the conclusion after 8 years of writing and researching that it was marketing that drove the companies--selling prescription drugs rather than discovering them had become the industry's obsession.

To help make her point Petersen states a statistic that comes from the Federal Drug Administration that 100,000 Americans die every year from their prescription drugs--that they took just as the doctor directed. This wasn't when a doctor or a pharmacist make a mistake or the patient accidentally took too much.

My reason for sharing this story isn't to promote Peterson's book or even to say that I agree with her although she does make a compelling argument. I learned an important lesson from her as I watched her and listened to her and thought about what she was doing. As we all know the pharmaceutical industry is incredibly powerful.

Petersen explains how the drug companies have used advertising to promote their products. We only have to watch a few minutes of television and watch the ad after ad telling us that there is now a pill for anything and everything that ails us (or that we are made to believe that ails us!). These ads are even more powerful because the industry has learned that the public will be more likely to believe the message if it comes from someone who is trusted to be independent--like a doctor. Many physicians who used to be the gatekeeper who had the interest of his or her patients at heart are now given gifts or cash from the drug companies to participate in the propaganda. The drug company even now pays the FDA to get their drugs reviewed and approved. Adding to this troubling scenario Congress is in the grip of this industry. Petersen reports that in a recent six-year period the drug company spent more on lobbying that any other industry and now employs two lobbyists for every member of Congress.

In spite of the power of the drug company Petersen who is just a young reporter has been willing to fight it. While the majority of people has just accepted the overwhelming power of the drug companies and reconciled itself to the situation, Petersen has chosen to be a "David" who has taken her "slingshot" which is her book to fight this "Goliath."