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PHARMA ANDPROFITS
BALANCING INNOVATION, MEDICINE, AND DRUG PRICES
John L. LaMattina
Stonington, CT, USA
This edition first published 2022 © 2022 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
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For Sloane, Max, and Coco
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I must acknowledge the debt we all owe to the scientists around the globe whose tireless dedication and keen insights have produced the breakthrough vaccines and medications that have led the fight against Covid‐19. Countless lives have been saved by their efforts. They deserve our respect and admiration.
I would like to thank a few people for their advice and encouragement during the preparation of this book. Stephen Lederer provided terrific advice on key points in the narrative. The editorial skills of Mary LaMattina improved this manuscript immensely. Finally, Donna Green somehow managed to bring this all together.
J.L.L.
INTRODUCTION
The woman’s anguished accusation was stunning. “The pharmaceutical industry killed my daughter,” she yelled at me. I had just finished taping an episode of the syndicated TV series, The Dr. Oz Show, where I had tried, with little success, to defend that same industry … once the world’s most admired.
In 1997, three pharmaceutical companies were in the top 10 of Fortune’s list including Merck (#3), Johnson & Johnson (#4), and Pfizer (#8). Earlier, Merck had been lauded by Fortune magazine as the “World’s Most Admired Company” for seven straight years.
But by May 2011, when Dr. Oz hosted “The Four Things Drug Companies Don’t Want You to Know” that admiration and high regard had vanished. I had been invited to debate Dr. John Abramson, author of Overdosed America: The Broken Promise of American Medicine.
Back in the 1990s, those drug companies were best known for their breakthrough medicines for heart disease, depression, AIDS, and bacterial infections. They prospered with products that benefitted hundreds of millions of people. How could they not be admired?
Two decades later, on one of America’s most popular TV shows, a fired‐up, suspicious audience
