Book Reviews

From Science Based Medicine. By Jerry Avorn. This is an important book for our time ... Highly recommended! Dr. Avorn is uniquely qualified to write this book. He writes with the authority of seasoned scholar and the clarity of a skilled communicator. High profile examples are documented to illustrate his insights. The content is extraordinarily up to date. There are discussions of implications the 2024 election, in general, and the appointment of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as Sec

From Kirkus Reviews. A masterful assessment of a highly flawed health care system. Unsettling news about prescription drugs. Avorn, professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, reminds readers that pharmaceutical companies, despite bitter opposition, were required to prove that their drugs worked beginning only in 1962. Ironically, their first mass support came from radicals when 1980s AIDS activists denounced the neglect and slow pace of anti-AIDS drug approval. Respondi

From Publishers Weekly. A damning survey of the drug development system’s many failures, this enlightens even as it infuriates. In this troubling report, Avorn (Powerful Medicines), a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, explores problems with the development and administration of medicine. Charting America’s history of underregulating drugs, Avorn notes that listing a medication’s contents on its container only became mandatory in 1906, and that a 1962 law marked

From Kirkus Reviews. Marked by solid scholarship, measured criticism, and pithy comments: an informative and highly readable study Cogent analysis of how pharmaceutical drugs are approved, promoted, and prescribed in this country, with some well-considered recommendations for improving the present system. According to Avorn (Medicine/Harvard Medical School), Americans waste billions of dollars on prescription drugs that are overpriced, poorly prescribed, and improperly taken.