The Big Fix: How the Pharmaceutical Industry Rips Off American
Consumers
Joyce
Plaza
a1
a1 Joyce Plaza, M.S., M.B.E., is Administrator for Center
Affairs at the Columbia University Center for Bioethics, New
York
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The
Big
Fix:
How
the
Pharmaceutical
Industry
Rips
Off
American
Consumers, by Katharine Greider. New York: Public Affairs; 2003.
189 pp.
The Big Fix is, as Greider describes, “the utter folly of
allowing a profit-driven industry to name its price, while quietly
making over our public-health agenda in its own image”—the
theme of the book. Written in an easy-to-understand, conversational
manner targeted to the American consumer, The
Big
Fix is a
comprehensive description of the commonly held views of critics of the
pharmaceutical industry, although most of the points made are not
novel. In eight chapters, each given a catchy descriptive title,
Greider does a good job of detailing the issues and citing well-known
experts and critics of the industry, such as Marcia Angel and Thomas
Bodenheimer, even though she does not always provide the exact sources
of these citations for those academic types who may want to know more.
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