Marcia Angell Quotes

Money has transformed every watchdog, every independent authority. Medical doctors are increasingly gulled by the lobbying of pharmaceutical salesmen.

The public relies on the advice of doctors and leading researchers. The public has a right to know about financial relationships between those doctors and the drug companies who make the pharmaceuticals prescribed by doctors.

… There’s a lot of [tobacco industry] financial clout up here, and they do their best to reward their friends and punish their enemies …. They’re not really trying to accomplish an agenda, they’re just trying to stop one from ever being mounted against them.

This is the dark side of pharmaceutical practices in enlisting and paying professionals [phjysicians] to pitch their profit-making drug.

It [the pharmaceutical industry] is the most profitable industry in the world, and partially funds the US government. It surpasses oil in terms of profits and my country recently went to war due to oil pricing. What does that say they will do to keep this other industry in tact? It is up to patients and their families to question what they are being given, and to consumers to demand better, more natural alternatives.

The food industry, its trade associations, and research foundations, is well financed and highly organized to pressure the FDA.

The pharmaceutical corporations are engaged in the systematic corruption of the medical profession, country by country

Since the pharmaceuticals don't make any money and they control the doctors. If the doctors don't make any money then all hell breaks loose. In communities like LA and New York they are using a lot of the youth for a test sight.

I think FDA's concerns are patient-safety.

Now, what tends to happen is that the stories get hyped. And the medicines are not quite as revolutionary and as dramatic as they seem to be. But, certainly, various phases of this problem are being attacked by the pharmaceutical companies.

In general, drug companies are reasonably good at developing new treatments, and there's also a lot of good in the industry.

If you go to the FDA with a drug that's only meant to treat 50 people, and it's a 95 percent cure rate, you'll get your drug approved.

Drug company payments to doctors are a small part of a much larger strategy by Big Pharma to clean our pockets.

When the FDA forces an old drug off the market, patients have very little say in the matter. Patients have even less of a say when the FDA chooses not to approve a new drug. Instead, we are supposed to rely on the FDA's judgment and be grateful. But can the FDA really make a choice that is appropriate for everyone? Of course not.

I am attached to an incredible script called 'Wonder Drug,' about the DES drug disaster. It's a female-based drama, and I am so proud to be a part of because hopefully it will help evoke change - not only in our industry, but in the battle again corruption in big pharma.

When the FDA announced its intentions to join other countries and ban quinolone use on U.S. chicken farms, the drug manufacturer Bayer initiated legal action that successfully delayed the process for five years.

We've seen too often what happens when wealthy and powerful industries gain excessive influence over the agencies that regulate them. The capture of the Minerals Management Service at the Department of Interior contributed to the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010.

From drug companies to health insurers to Wall Street banks, big corporations are spending millions to buy influence in Washington and drown out the voices of regular people.

My father has fought to protect people from predatory pharmaceutical companies and to make sure drug payments and kickbacks to doctors are disclosed.

Secondly, as a result of this political favoritism, the FDA has become a primary factor in that formula whereby cartel-oriented companies in the food and drug industry are able to use the police powers of government to harass or destroy their free-market competitors.

The implication was that if you had any skepticism whatsoever, you were anti-science. I think there's a difference between having skepticism about science and having skepticism about the pharmaceutical industry.

We do not have free market capitalism in America; we have crony capitalism. There is a huge difference between free market capitalism that democratizes a country and makes us more efficient and prosperous and corporate crony capitalism.

The Grocery Manufacturers Association is behind the bills which have been trying to pre-empt states' labeling laws in the Senate. And they have a lot of money and power in Washington. So it's a classic David versus Goliath story, where corporate lobbying outweighs consumers' rights.

A surgeon would never hesitate to amputate a rotting hand, no matter how faithfully it had served its owner in the past.

Very big business is in bed with very big government in Washington, and has more to do with what the average person sees, hears and reads than most people know.