Generation Rx

Book excerpt: This in-depth look at the rise of Big Pharma and pill marketing is “a page-turner” (Booklist, starred review). A finalist for a PEN America Literary Award for Research Nonfiction, this book takes a deep look at how the pharmaceutical industry—with some help from the medical and insurance fields and from American consumers themselves—has pushed its products, often at the expense of our health. Generation Rx reveals the roots of many of the widespread societal problems we face today, explaining how marketing efforts changed powerful chemical compounds for chronic diseases, once controlled by physicians, into substances we feel entitled to, whether we need them or not. Using exclusive interviews with the strategists, scientists, and current and former heads of GlaxoSmithKline, Eli Lilly, Merck, Roche, and more, the author of Fat Land presents a “fascinating and disturbing” story of business interests unleashed on an unsuspecting public, and a cultural shift that has caused lasting—and sometimes lethal—damage (New Scientist). “What Fast Food Nation did for the way Americans eat, Greg Critser does for the way we medicate ourselves.” —Michael Pollan, bestselling author of The Omnivore’s Dilemma