Product Description

From one of today's leading authorities on natural medicine comes a provocative look into how the pharmaceutical and medical industries have created our current health crisis and a practical guide to the holistic treatments that may help you and your loved ones.

Modern medicine offers many wonders, but an ever-present reliance on medications to cure what ails us is at the core of America's health crisis. Drawing on more than thirty years' worth of scientific research, Dr. Michael T. Murray has assembled irrefutable evidence that the pharmaceutical treatments for the most common diseases that plague our society are often ineffective and result in serious, widespread side effects -- the existence of which is frequently hidden from the public.

What the Drug Companies Won't Tell You and Your Doctor Doesn't Know offers a close look at the way that the American healthcare system has evolved in the last fifty years and examines the roles of the FDA, the pharmaceutical monopolies, and the medical community in producing what has become a failing healthcare system with little accountability. Dr. Murray illustrates how a nationwide dependence on pills has hobbled health in America and resulted in a national wellness epidemic as lifestyle, ignorance, and politics collide in our medicine cabinets.

At a time when adverse reactions to over-the-counter and prescription drugs are currently estimated to kill more than 100,000 Americans a year (making this the fourth leading cause of death in the United States behind cancer, heart disease, and stroke) and when Americans use more than 40 percent of all of the prescription drugs produced in the world each year (according to the World Health Organization) yet are forty-second in terms of life expectancy, we must radically reevaluate the way that we take care of ourselves.

Both a call to arms and a practical guide to the natural treatments that could revolutionize both your health and the well-being of the entire nation, What the Drug Companies Won't Tell You and Your Doctor Doesn't Know provides clear guidance on the steps needed to help you lead a fitter, happier, and healthier life.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #60991 in Books
• Published on: 2009-06-30
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 352 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9781416549338
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

Review
"Dr. Michael Murray compellingly explains the naturopathic alternative to conventional drug therapy for common health concerns."-- Andrew Weil , M.D., author of the forthcoming Why Our Health Matters

About the Author
Michael T. Murray, N.D., is widely regarded as one of the worldÕs leading authorities on natural medicine. He has been featured on numerous television programs, including 20/20 and Dateline. He lives in Washington.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

IS IT REALLY POSSIBLE that American baby boomers and younger generations have been led down a road to poor health by the pharmaceutical industry and conventional medical practice? Have the very industries, organizations, and medical doctors responsible for designing our health care system created the catastrophe of skyrocketing medical costs? Are the drug companies so powerful that they exert virtually complete control over the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), medical schools, prestigious medical journals, and continuing medical education for physicians? Is it true that adverse reactions to over-the-counter (OTC) and prescription drugs are estimated to kill over 100,000 Americans a year, making these reactions the fourth-largest cause of death in the United States, behind cancer, heart disease, and strokes?

The answer to all these questions is yes. The pharmaceutical industry and the medical monopoly have created a health care crisis in America. In this book, we will, together, take a peek behind the curtain to expose some of the fallacies and shortcomings of many popular medications. It is absolutely true that most of us have been helped in almost magical ways by the wonders of modern medicine, but the reality is that conventional medicine has also created a lack of personal accountability and a complete reliance on little pills to cure what ails us. We now have on our hands a modern epidemic, consisting not only of diseases that are clearly a result of diet and lifestyle, but also of diseases due to the side effects of drugs used in their treatment.

The United States has by far the highest per capita use of conventional medicines and uses over more than 40 percent of all of the drugs produced in the world each year, according to the World Health Organization (WHO); but we are only forty-second in terms of life expectancy. We are definitely not getting our money's worth from our medicine. It is easy to demonize the greedy pharmaceutical industry, but the problem is much deeper than that. It is also easy to say that most medical doctors have simply been unknowing pawns in the drug companies' game of profits, never realizing that they have been led to perpetuate lies, half-truths, and incomplete science; but the reality is that the medical profession has done a questionable job in protecting the health of the patient. In fact, many doctors are willing players in the game. They do not mind. It represents easy money. The average income for a medical doctor is more than $200,000 per year, and many specialists, such as radiologists and heart surgeons, have an average income of more than $300,000 per year. It could be that there is one very big reason why many medical doctors do not practice preventive medicine -- money. The average yearly income for a member of the American College of Preventive Medicine, a group of preventive medical doctors, is $100,000 -- a good income, but considerably less than half the average income for other medical specialties.

Also, it is estimated that drug companies spend more than $57.5 billion a year marketing to physicians. This figure includes about $14 billion for what is referred to in the industry as "unmonitored promotion"; it can include lavish vacations and getaways, ostensibly continuing medical education. With about 700,000 practicing physicians in the United States, it is estimated that the drug industry spends about $60,000 in marketing per physician.

Do the Drug Companies Spend More on Marketing or Research?

According to a very detailed analysis by two Canadian researchers, Marc-André Gagnon and Joel Lexchin, "The Cost of Pushing Pills: A New Estimate of Pharmaceutical Promotion Expenditures in the United States," drug companies spend twice as much money on marketing as on research and development. Now, the U.S. General Accountability Office (GAO) says otherwise. Why the discrepancy? Well, it turns out that the data supplied to the GAO are from IMS, a firm specializing in pharmaceutical market intelligence. There are many concerns about the accuracy of the IMS data, chief among them being that the data are derived by asking the drug companies to supply them. The bottom line is that the IMS data are simply not consistent with other published sources, including data provided by the U.S. Office of Technology Assessment as well as information gathered from year-end financial reports from the drug companies themselves.

If anyone knows the depth of the deceit and false promises heaped on Americans by drug companies, it is Marcia Angell, M.D., former editor in chief of the New England Journal of Medicine, one of the most respected medical journals in the world. According to Dr. Angell, the pharmaceutical industry "has moved very far from its original high purpose of discovering and producing useful new drugs. Now primarily a marketing machine to sell drugs of dubious benefit, this industry uses its wealth and power to co-opt every institution that might stand in its way, including the U.S. Congress, the Food and Drug Administration, academic medical centers, and the medical profession itself."

There is now considerable evidence that the drug companies exert significant control over the FDA and the drug approval process. More than half of the experts hired to advise the FDA on the safety and effectiveness of drugs have financial relationships with drug companies that will be helped or hurt by their decisions. Federal law generally prohibits the FDA from using experts with financial conflicts of interest, but the FDA waived this rule 800 times in a 15-month period from January 1998 to June 2000. In an analysis of all advisory panel meetings from 2001 to 2004, at least one member had a financial link to the drug's maker or a competitor in 73 percent of the meetings. The potential damage from such ties was exemplified in 2005, when the FDA convened a meeting to discuss the toxicity of the COX-2 inhibitors Vioxx, Celebrex, and Bextra. Had the ten committee members with ties to industry been precluded from voting, the committee would have voted against continued marketing for Vioxx and Bextra; instead, all three drugs received favorable votes. As a result these potentially dangerous drugs were allowed to stay on the market. That trend has created a huge problem, because 20 percent of all approved drugs over the last 25 years were later found to have serious side effects leading either to the withdrawal of the drug from market or to warning labels noting these serious side effects. The drug companies could afford to take a gamble on drugs like Vioxx, Celebrex, Avandia, OxyContin, and others because of the huge profits they could generate.

Since the 1950s, drugs have been the most profitable industry in America. In December 1959, the last year of the Eisenhower administration, the Senate Subcommittee on Antitrust and Monopoly reported on a yearlong investigation of the drug industry with the declaration that the public was not only being overcharged for drugs but was being ripped off for useless and sometimes harmful medicines. Three charges were leveled at the drug industry by the subcommittee: (1) Patents sustained predatory prices and excessive margins. (2) Costs and prices were extravagantly increased in order to fund marketing expenditures. (3) Most of the industry's new products were no more effective than lower-priced, established drugs on the market. Back in the 1950s, this report changed the image of drug companies: the companies had been seen as employing lifesaving "researchers in white coats" but were now seen as employing primarily zealous "sales reps in cars."

Has the situation changed in the last 50 years? Yes: it has gotten much better for the drug companies, at the public's expense. During the past 50 years drug costs have skyrocketed at a rate five times inflation. In 1960, the drug industry had a profit margin of 10.6 percent of sales. By 1992, this had increased to 13 percent. In 2005, it was 18 percent. Pfizer, the world's number one drug company, had a profit margin of 26 percent of sales.

In 1980, the average prescription cost $6.52; in 1992 the cost was $22.50; in 2006 it was $50.17. Drug costs are higher in the United States than anywhere else in the world. Most major industrial nations apply profit control to limit how much a drug company can charge for a drug. Because most drug companies market the same drug throughout the world, they rely on the United States for the bulk of their profits. In the United States, drug companies can increase the price of drugs without fear, because there is very little competition. In fact, there is more cooperation between drug companies to keep prices high than there is price competitiveness.

The simple sum expressed above is astronomical in real life because more people than ever before are being placed on high-priced drugs. For example, roughly 4 billion prescriptions were filled last year, about 12 prescriptions for every person in the United States. Are all these prescriptions necessary? Remember that the United States uses more than 40 percent of all the drugs in the world but ranks only forty-second in life expectancy; also, it ranks only thirty-seventh in the quality of its health system, according to WHO. The high cost of drugs is bankrupting our elderly population, and our society. The number of seniors who depend on prescription drugs is unbearable. In 1992, the average senior received 19.6 prescriptions per year; in 2005, that number had nearly doubled, to 34.4. The average person over th...

Customer Reviews

Intriguing Facts on the Drug Companies, and how to break free from drugs
This book is destined to become a classic among those that shift the paradigm from toxic drug use to natural healing! It is very reader friendly for the layman. In the first chapter, Murray illustrates how the drug companies only care about money, not health. (When I first discovered this years ago, it was like finding out your mother had Munchousen syndrome by proxy---a mental disorder in which moms poision their kids!) Dr. Murray packs the chapter with shocking facts: Though the USA buys 40% of the world's drugs, we rank 42 in life expectancy. $57 billion is spent on marketing to MDs, and twice as much is spent on marketing as on drug research. Their research is suspect, since they hire for-profit research companies and are also able to suppress the research that doesn't show the drug as effective. In the last 20 years, 2 million have died from adverse drug reactions!

In chapter 2, Dr. Murray explains that the knowledge of the body as self-healing has been forgotten by doctors. He points out that many drugs are really little more than a placebo effect, harnessing the power of the patient's mind to heal the body. Murray teaches us how drugs merely relieve symptoms but absolutely do not cure. One can never heal without getting to the root of the illness. As an expample, he had a patient with high blood pressure. Instead of giving him drugs, Murry learned the guy was jogging near the freeway, which made him breathe in lead. Once he switched to the beach, the blood pressure normalized!

In several of the chapters, Dr. Murray takes us on a detailed journey of common health disorders (such as headaches, osteoarthritis, asthma and more) and points out the pitfalls and side effects of drug treatment and the simplicity and effectiveness of natural remedies. After that, he exposes the cholesterol myth and shows the more sinister side of drug companies, explaining that "six of the nine expert members of the government panel that drafted the new cholesterol guidelines had either recieved grants from or were paid consulting or speakers' fees by the companies taht make some of the most popular statin drugs." He says that the levels of "normal" cholesterol were lowered just so more people would go on drugs! (There is a great deal of other shocking material like this in this book.)

Murray shows us many other gems, such as how we were scammed into taking SSRIs and obesity is a common side effect though it is STILL not listed as one. (Decades ago, I took Prozac and gained 40 pounds within MONTHS!)

Dr. M. points out that many drugs actually CAUSE the symptoms they are supposed to be treating, so you get addicted to them! Examples include headache medicine and NSAIDS used for joint pain (which destroy the carilage!).He also shows us how to critically analyze media stories that belittle natural remedies like fish oil or Saint John's Wart. He tops the book off with a detailed chapter on how to get well and stay well.

Though I have read hundreds of nutrition books (have even written one myself!) I was pleased to learn many new facts, such as that Vitamin D is anti-aging!

I was criticized as being "negative" when I put exposed the drug companies in an appendix of my book, The Live Food Factor. But people need to be deprogrammed! I applaud Dr. Murray's courage to take on the medical establishment, and I hope this book gets into the hands of all doctors and patients, as well as health seekers everywhere!

An Interesting Approach to Healthful Living
The first thing I did when I received this review copy was to Google "Bastyr University" and find out exactly what the N.D. degree means since that is the author's official medical degree. I'd recommend any reader do that first before reading the book. "The university is located north of Seattle, Washington. Named by the "Princeton Review' as one of the 168 best medical schools in the country, the School of Naturopathic Medicine at Bastyr University is committed to developing leaders in the evolving field of natural medicine. Bastyr's fully accredited naturopathic doctor (ND) program is internationally renowned for its rigorous curriculum, comprehensive clinical training and ground breaking research." The University also gives various kinds of degrees in Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine, Nutrition, Health Psychology, Herbal Sciences, Exercise Science and Wellness, and has graduate schools of Midwifery Certification and Applied Behavioral Science. With the book author's medical credentials out of the way, the reader can then dive into this interesting study done by "one of the world's leading authorities on natural medicine." He is co-author of "Textbook of Natural Medicine" and has written 20 other books as well.
"Naturopathic medicine," unlike conventional or "allopathic medicine" that focuses primarily on treating disease rather than promoting health, naturopathic "is a system that emphasizes prevention, treatment and the promotion of optimal health through the use of natural, nontoxic therapies."
The author warns the readers that "when people refer to me as an expert in alternative medicine, I usually correct them. I am a proponent of what I like to describe as `rational' medicine, which combines the best of both conventional medicine and alternative methods."
The book contains eleven major chapters that include "A Matter of Trust--Making Medicine or Making Money: The Number One Thing that they Don't Want you to Know: An Overlooked Goal of Healing--Removing Obstacles to a Cure: Functional Medicine Versus the Treatment of Disease: Is Symptom Relief a Path to Bad Medicine: Creating a Market Versus Providing a Cure; Exploiting the Cholesterol Myth: Drugs are Less Powerful than Our Attitude: Drugs Cannot Overcome a Poor Diet or an Unhealthy Lifestyle: Looking Behind the Headlines and Through he Bias: and How to Get Well. Stated simply, that is what is included in this book along with dozens of examples and nearly a hundred pages of Appendix, Notes an a very good Index.
This is another very good book of common sense backed up with studies that help prove the common sense. In addition to pointing out the way to naturally maintain optimum health and wellness, as the book's title indicates it also exposes much of the current medical culture of treating illness mostly with drugs alone. Americans have come to expect to substitute healthful lifestyles with short cuts and quick fixes provided by taking pills. Even medical doctors don't know the full truth behind some of drugs they recommend. "The drug industry spends about $60,000 in marketing per physician annually." "Drugs like Paxil, Zolft, and Prozac contribute to obesity, but weight gain is not listed as a common side effect of those drugs" and it hardly needs to be said that patients taking those drugs don't need the kind of extra stress and worry produced by uncontrolled obesity.
A couple more quick samples of the kind of information provided by this volume are that "Olive oil contains a heart-protective monounsaturated fatty acid, oleic acid. It also contains several antioxidant agents that prevent circulating LDL cholesterol from becoming damaged and then subsequently damaging the arteries." As most of us have heard for years, "Fish oils can also lower the risk of many cancers--particularly breast, prostate, colon and lung cancer--and many other chronic diseases, including Alzheimer's disease, asthma, depression, diabetes, high blood pressure, macular degeneration, multiple sclerosis, and rheumatoid arthritis."
I found this book fascinating, but I should probably mention that I grew up as a devoted Christian Scientist, and many of these healthful lifestyle practices were a part of my everyday life without my having any idea why. I'm definitely not a doctor, diet guru, exercise fanatic or somebody who has ever paid much attention to medical theories so I can't vouch for how much of this book's information is true, but it does seem to square with my life experience. Every reader will have to judge that for themselves.
One minor recommendation for this volume that I encountered first-hand was that as soon as I'd finished it, two adult members of my family were arguing about who would get to take the book home. It was out of my hands in a flash.

Interesting reading
Overall the quality of this book is very good. The author starts out with a compelling discussion about research methods used by the pharmaceutical companies.

He then provides an overview of common disorders, mentions traditional conventional treatment methods and then discusses alternatives that may prove helpful.

If you are hoping to find some new nuggets of information, they are included. Also included however are many of the "standards of care" and many of the alternative approaches have already been covered extensively in other sources.

When discussing the issue of cholesterol, he points out the "traditional values" but only touches on the issue of cholesterol molecule size. No mention is made of "oxidized cholesterol" which even cardiologists are pointing out is now a significant risk factor.

When discussing BMI, the author defends the validity of the measurement, taking sides with insurance companies. While mention is made of muscle mass, nothing is noted regarding those who have large frame (skeletal) sizes.

Current research suggests a waist size of half your height may be an ideal measurement. However, the book holds to the old 40 inch rule for males.

To summarize, there are good sections to the book. If you are new to the topic of alternative health, then it could be a 5 star publication. The author does a very good job of contrasting conventional medicine with some alternatives that you may find helpful.