From HealthAffairs. By Aaron S. Kesselheim and Jerry Avorn. At a time of rapidly developing new medications and growing public health challenges, there is now no official leadership in place at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the Office of the Surgeon General. Marty Makary's legacy will be that he undercut many of the key principles that had made the agency one of the most important public health institutions in the

With Mirko von Hein and The Pharma Perspective. Harvard professor Jerry Avorn and I discuss drug regulation, FDA approval standards, surrogate endpoints, pharmaceutical pricing, public research funding, medical misinformation, and what all of this means for patients, innovation, and health policy.

Harlan Krumholz & Howard Forman, Yale Medical School | Health & Veritas Podcast. In a Wide-Ranging Interview, Dr. Jerry Avorn Explains How the Drug Marketing Machine Works — and How to Counter It Source: Health & Veritas, Yale School of Management, Episode 195, November 13, 2025 In a November 2025 episode of Health & Veritas — the Yale School of Management podcast hosted by physicians Howard Forman and Harlan Krumholz — Jerry Avorn, MD, sat down for an extended conversation c

From NPR's On Point. By Meghna Chakrabarti. In this October 2025 episode of WBUR's On Point, Dr. Jerry Avorn joins host Meghna Chakrabarti and Sarah Emond, president and CEO of the Institute for Clinical and Economic Review (ICER), to dissect the Trump administration's TrumpRx initiative, analyze the deals struck with Pfizer and AstraZeneca, and explain why the United States pays dramatically more for prescription drugs than every other wealthy nation on earth. Why Americans

From The Health Affairs Forefront. By Jerry Avorn, MD and Aaron S. Kesselheim, MD, JD, MPH. SUMMARY: This Health Affairs Forefront piece examines the potential impact of sweeping Trump administration tariffs on the US health care system. The authors argue that tariffs framed as tools of economic and geopolitical strategy carry serious unintended consequences for health care supply chains, hospital budgets, and medication affordability. The piece provides concrete data on US r

From The People’s Pharmacy. Abstract "Americans spend more on drugs and have less to show for it than people in other countries. The FDA used to be the envy of the world. Has it been captured by the pharmaceutical industry it's supposed to regulate?" In this wide-ranging episode of The People's Pharmacy — one of the most substantive and practically useful interviews in the archive — Dr. Jerry Avorn joins hosts Joe and Terry Graedon for a 70-minute conversation covering the er

From American Society for Pharmacy Law (ASPL). In this special edition premiere of Post Scrip, host Henry sits down with Dr. Jerry Avorn, MD, Harvard Medical School professor and author of the groundbreaking book Rethinking Medications: Truth, Power and the Drugs You Take. Dr. Avorn, a senior internist at Mass General Brigham and author of over 600 papers, takes us on a dive into the complex world of drug approval, pricing, and pharmaceutical policy. This episode explores how

S4E1 - Rethinking Medications with Dr. Jerry Avorn, MD From Post Scrip. In this special edition premiere of Post Scrip, host Henry sits down with Dr. Jerry Avorn, MD, Harvard Medical School professor and author of the groundbreaking book Rethinking Medications: Truth, Power and the Drugs You Take. Dr. Avorn, a senior internist at Mass General Brigham and author of over 600 papers, takes us on a dive into the complex world of drug approval, pricing, and pharmaceutical policy.

From Causes or Cures Podcast with Dr. Eeks. In this episode of Causes or Cures, Dr. Eeks chats with Dr. Jerry Avorn, a Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, drug safety watchdog, and author of Rethinking Medications: Truth, Power, and the Drugs You Take. If you’ve ever felt uneasy about the rising cost of prescription drugs, the process or speed by which new meds are approved, or why the side effects list is longer than your grocery receipt, this episode is for you

From the Health Affairs Forefront. By Aaron S. Kesselheim, MD, JD, MPH and Jerry Avorn, MD. SUMMARY: This Health Affairs Forefront piece by Kesselheim and Avorn reviews the gap between the Trump administration's rhetoric on drug pricing and its actual policy record, and warns that new tariff-based initiatives represent a step backward. The authors note that despite considerable noise about lowering drug prices in Trump's first term, little of consequence was accomplished. In

From Big Brains Podcast. Teaser/Abstract "When a patient gets a medication from their doctor or nurse practitioner, they assume that somebody has looked very carefully at this drug and determined that it is indeed effective for the purposes for which it's being given to you and that it's reasonably safe. I frankly think a lot of us doctors believe that that's all kind of taken care of as well." Source: Big Brains podcast, University of Chicago Podcast Network, Episode publish

From Science-Based Policy. By David Weinberg. Teaser/Abstract "Rethinking Medications: Truth, Power, and the Drugs You Take by Jerry Avorn presents a critical appraisal of the state of the prescription medications in the United States. It explores the complex relationships among drug companies, regulators, prescribers, academics, and patients. The book is part history of US drug regulation, part critique of the status quo, and finally, a roadmap for a better path forward." S

From MedPage Today. By Jerry Avorn. Teaser/Abstract "Ideally, the approval of a new drug should be exclusively the province of science, but for a more than half-trillion-dollar-a-year industry, it couldn't possibly remain so. The same libertarian posture of the earlier twentieth century — the spirit that opposed government's right to require accurate drug labeling and prevent toxicity — lives on in the insistence by some advocates on the far right that the government shouldn'

From PBS’ Amanpour and Company. Teaser/Abstract "This week, President Trump issued an executive order aiming to reduce high prescription drug prices and insisting that drug companies ensure Americans pay the same price as other countries. Dr. Jerry Avorn is a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School. He joins Hari Sreenivasan to discuss why the cost of medication in the U.S. is so high, and what Trump can do to bring prices down." Source: Amanpour and Company, PBS/WNET

From NPR's On Point. By Paige Sutherland and Deborah Becker. Teaser/Abstract "With more than 60% of Americans taking a prescription drug, there are increasing questions about how these medicines are approved, how they're kept safe and how they're priced. In a new book, Harvard's Dr. Jerry Avorn argues the drugs we take have been compromised by profits." Source: On Point with Meghna Chakrabarti, WBUR Boston, April 21, 2025. Host: Deborah Becker. Duration: 45 minutes 32 seconds

From The Washington Post. By Jerry Avorn, MD. SUMMARY: In this Washington Post opinion piece, Dr. Avorn argues that the FDA's binary approve-or-reject framework is structurally ill-suited to drugs like Leqembi (lecanemab), which occupy a gray zone of modest benefit and meaningful risk. Leqembi offers only modest benefit for Alzheimer's disease, could pose worrisome safety risks, and stands to cost the nation $2 billion to $5 billion per year. Avorn contends that even when a d

From the New England Journal of Medicine. By Kerstin N. Vokinger, MD, JD, PhD, LLM; Jerry Avorn, MD; Aaron S. Kesselheim, MD, JD, MPH. SUMMARY: This NEJM Perspective examines a fundamental contradiction in the pricing of gene therapies: their prices are exceptionally high, yet the key scientific innovations underlying their development were largely driven by academic and other publicly funded research institutions rather than by the pharmaceutical companies now charging for t

From the New England Journal of Medicine. By Pieter A. Cohen, MD; Jerry Avorn, MD; Aaron S. Kesselheim, MD, JD, MPH. SUMMARY: This NEJM Perspective critically evaluates the Dietary Supplement Listing Act of 2022, arguing that the bill would create an appearance of regulatory reform while leaving the core problems of supplement oversight unresolved. The authors — Cohen, Avorn, and Kesselheim — contend that the Act's listing requirement would be largely symbolic, providing regu

From Health Affairs. By Aaron S. Kesselheim, MD, JD, MPH; Jonathan J. Darrow, SJD, JD, MBA; Martin Kulldorff; Beatrice L. Brown; Mayookha Mitra-Majumdar; ChangWon C. Lee; Osman Moneer; Jerry Avorn, MD. SUMMARY: This Health Affairs article provides a systematic overview of the processes by which vaccines are developed, evaluated, approved, and regulated in the United States, with explicit attention to how these processes would apply to COVID-19 vaccines being developed under e

From the New England Journal of Medicine. By Jerry Avorn, MD and Aaron S. Kesselheim, MD, JD, MPH. SUMMARY: This NEJM Perspective examines an unprecedented role reversal in the COVID-19 vaccine approval process. In September 2020, nine pharmaceutical company leaders took the unusual step of pledging not to apply for vaccine approval until adequate trial data were available — signaling caution — while the federal government was simultaneously pushing to accelerate emergency au