Overdosed America: The Broken Promise of American Medicine

Overdosed America examines how commercialization of medical knowledge has created a crisis in American healthcare. Using examples including Vioxx, Celebrex, cholesterol-lowering statin drugs, and anti-depressants, the book shows how the primary purpose of medical knowledge has shifted from optimizing health to maximizing profits. John Abramson, M.D., spent twenty years as a family doctor in a small town north of Boston before investigating the changes occurring in American medicine. Drawing on his background in statistics and health policy research, he found that lack of transparency in commercially sponsored medical research has compromised the scientific evidence published in prestigious medical journals. This commercial distortion affects information doctors use to guide prevention and treatment of common health problems including heart disease, stroke, osteoporosis, diabetes, and osteoarthritis. Abramson argues that real scientific evidence demonstrates many self-directed health measures are more effective than top-selling pharmaceutical products. He presents evidence that American medicine has failed to fulfill its promise to improve public health and wastes over $500 billion annually in the process.