Notes from the Introduction:

• Once the most successful pharmaceutical companies were those with the brightest scientists searching for cures. Now the most profitable and powerful drug makers are those with the most creative and aggressive marketers. 
• Selling prescription drugs- rather than discovering them- has become the pharmaceutical industry’s obsession.
• Americans spent more on prescription drugs in 2004 than they did on gasoline or fast food
• Americans spend more on medicines than do all the people of Japan, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, the UK, Australia, New England, Canada, Mexico, Brazil, and Argentina COMBINED.
• The vase majority of the industry’s marketing dollars is directed not at consumers but at physicians, the gatekeepers whom patients trust.
• In 2004 the industry employed an army of 101,000 sales representatives to call on those doctors- two and a half the sales force in 1995.
• There is now one drug sales person for every six physicians
• 10% of the price of most brand name pills goes to cover the cost of the raw chemicals and manufacturing, the industry has plenty left even after paying for advertisements, research and the high salaries and expensive perks of its executives.
• With their hoards of cash, the companies have readily handed money to patient groups, hospitals, universities, medical schools, physician societies, government agencies, and just about any organization they want on their side.
• The pharmaceutical companies spent more on lobbying between 1998 and 2004 than any other industry... employing a legion of lobbyists.. more than two for each member of Congress.
• The United States is the only developed country in the world that does not control prescription drug prices.
• The US and New Zealand are the only countries that allow drug makers to advertise to consumers.
• Many people are swallowing expensive new pills when older, far cheaper drugs that are not promoted would be best.

Chapters include: 
Creating Disease, Chemical Imbalance,... Altered State, Deadly Doses