wbur.org
support wbur today!
Listen to this story
Thursday, June 12, 2008 at 10:00 AM EDT
Our Daily Meds
photo

America’s health care costs are breaking budgets all over, but the tab for pharmaceuticals just keeps rising.

In 1980, Americans spent $12 billion on prescription drugs. Now it’s more like $200 billion. More than any other country — and yet we don’t live longer than others.

Reporter Melody Petersen asked what’s going on. What she found was shocking conflicts of interest. Medical professionals co-opted by drug companies for shady research and non-stop marketing. It looks like a scandal of pushers.

This hour, On Point: Our daily meds, and a nation hooked on prescription drugs.

- Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Melody Petersen, an award-winning former reporter for The New York Times and The San Jose Mercury News, and the author of “Our Daily Meds: How the Pharmaceutical Companies Transformed Themselves Into Slick Marketing Machines and Hooked the Nation on Prescription Drugs.”

Daniel Carlat, M.D., professor of psychiatry at Tufts University School of Medicine and editor-in-chief of The Carlat Psychiatry Report.

 

Tags: , ,

 
 

Comments are closed.

Recent Shows
Poker: America’s Game
Thursday, November 19, 2009 image

Poker and American history. How the game of presidents, cowboys, gangsters, and online gamblers helped shape America.

Comments [10]
 
Google vs. Murdoch
Thursday, November 19, 2009 image

Rupert Murdoch wants to block the search giant from scooping free content from his newspapers. We’ll look at the staredown.

Comments [133]
On Point Blog
Michael Wolff and Jeff Jarvis on Murdoch v. Google

We had a rousing discussion about Google vs. Murdoch, and what it says about the whole future of news, with Michael Wolff, Jeff Jarvis, and Steven Brill. Here’s what Wolff and Jarvis had to say about the delusions of both Murdoch and Google.

More » | Comments [20]
 
Video: Google CEO Eric Schmidt

Last week, host Tom Ashbrook was on stage with Google CEO Eric Schmidt, asking him about some of the biggest technology and business issues of our time.
It was part of an MIT event held on Thursday, Nov. 5, to commemorate computer science professor Michael Hammer, who died last year. Here’s video of the full interview, courtesy of WBUR.org:

Among other things, Schmidt said the possibilities [...]

More » | Comments [4]
 
California, here we come! And we need your questions!

On Point is headed west!
No, no. Not for good. Only for one show. But it’s a very special show!  The NPR station in Thousand Oaks, California – KCLU – is celebrating their 15th anniversary. We’re lucky to have been on their airwaves for nearly seven years, and they invited us out west to host a live [...]

More » | Comments [10]