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Chronic
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Chronic

For big pharma, the perfect patient is wealthy, permanently ill and a daily pill-popper. Will medicine ever recover?

Clayton Dalton
Aeon, 2018
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Editorial Rating

8

Qualities

  • Eye Opening
  • Concrete Examples
  • Engaging

Recommendation

At the heart of the pharmaceutical industry lies a paradox: Devoted to helping people get well, the drug industry depends on patients staying sick. Clayton Dalton, a resident at the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, traces the economic forces that influence research and treatment choices for chronic disease. For anyone interested in the business of health and disease, getAbstract recommends Dalton’s analysis of the interactions of money and medicine.

Take-Aways

  • In the pharmaceutical industry, market forces distort research and treatment decisions – benefiting companies more than patients.
  • Since the 1982 Orphan Drug Act, drug research for previously neglected rare conditions has become massively profitable.
  • Research into the causes of chronic diseases accelerated in the late 1940s with the National Heart Act and the Framingham Heart Study.

About the Author

Clayton Dalton is a medical resident at the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. 

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