Pulitzer Prize finalist (Investigative History), Gerald Posner presented one of the best talks I’ve seen about the evolution of the pharmaceutical industry from a small, unregulated endeavor in the 1860s to “Big Pharma” as we know it today.
In this video, Posner takes us on the following journey:
- Its origin: the American Civil War and the need for morphine
- Through its unregulated period, when cocaine and opium are regular ingredients of “medications”
- The creation of the Food and Drug Administration
- The advent of the pharmaceutical marketing machine run by three brothers, Arthur, Mortimer, and Raymond Sackler, that would launch pharmaceutical revenues through the roof and make them the darlings of Wall Street
- The events that led to the OxyContin disaster. How does an “end-of-life” drug get mainstreamed?
Posner believes serious reforms are needed in how large pharmaceutical corporations operate in the United States. On planet Earth, only the United States and New Zealand allow direct marketing of prescription drugs to the public, and only the United States allows pharmaceutical corporations to set their own drug prices.
Gerald Posner delivered this presentation on March 7, 2023, at Hillsdale College in Michigan during a Hillsdale College seminar on “Big Pharma.”
CLICK ON THE IMAGE TO WATCH THE YOUTUBE VIDEO