About Jerry Avorn, MD

For 50 years, Jerry Avorn has studied prescription drugs from inside America's medical system—and he's dedicated his career to making medications work better for patients, not profits.

From 1960s activist to Harvard researcher: the journey never changed the mission

I didn't plan to spend my life studying prescription drugs. In the 1960s, I was an undergrad at Columbia University protesting for social justice, serving as an editor of the Columbia Daily Spectator, and pushing for progressive change on several fronts. When I went to medical school, I thought I'd left activism behind for science.

Turns out, I'd just found a different way to try and fix things.

My medical training coincided with early psychedelic research—work that seemed radical then and is now being studied as a treatment for PTSD and depression. I learned early that the medical establishment isn't always right, and that asking uncomfortable questions often leads to the best answers.

At Harvard, I built one of the nation's leading prescription drug research programs by doing something simple but revolutionary: asking whether medications actually work, whether they're truly safe, and whether their prices make any sense. Pharmaceutical companies didn't always appreciate these questions. But patients needed someone asking them.

I pioneered the approach of 'academic detailing'—a way to give doctors unbiased, evidence-based information about medications instead of the sales pitches they get from pharmaceutical reps. That program now reaches prescribers worldwide, and through the non-profit I started, AlosaHealth.org.

I testified in the Vioxx litigation, standing with patients who'd suffered heart attacks from a medication that should have been pulled from the market earlier. It wasn't the popular side to take, but it was the right side.

And then, while finishing Rethinking Medications, my wife was diagnosed with leukemia. Suddenly, I wasn't just the researcher studying the system—I was a family member navigating it. Watching her undergo treatment, I saw both the miracles modern medicine can achieve and the unnecessary obstacles our healthcare system can sometimes put in the way.

That's why I wrote this book. Not as a Harvard professor lecturing from on high, but as someone who's spent 50 years inside the system and knows we can do better. We have wonderful medications that can save lives. We just need to use them more wisely, more safely, and more affordably.

That's not a radical idea. It's common sense. And it's achievable.