Prometheus 6

'The Truth About the Drug Companies' and 'Powerful Medicines': The Drug Lords
By STEPHEN S. HALL

DURING the past year, when I was driving my children to school, I'd hear the same advertisement on the radio again and again. You've probably heard it too: as somber music played in the background, a young man, his voice cracking, explains how he developed a rare and deadly form of cancer. He wonders if he will ever play baseball with his son, and then relates how, thanks to a company called Novartis and its new cancer treatment (never mentioned, but a drug called Gleevec), he's been given a new lease on life.

What is most fascinating about this ad is that it should seem necessary. As Marcia Angell points out in ''The Truth About the Drug Companies: How They Deceive Us and What to Do About It'': ''Truly good drugs don't have to be promoted. A genuinely important new drug, such as Gleevec, sells itself.'' So why advertise a cancer drug that cures a fatal leukemia and has no competition? The answer, of course, is that Novartis is not advertising Gleevec, but the company itself -- and the virtues of the drug industry as a whole. Why? Because, as Angell notes, a ''perfect storm'' of indignation -- on the part of consumers, regulators -- and even doctors -- may be developing around the pharmaceutical business.