Interview 

With Dr John Abramson

I interviewed him via email and asked him questions mostly directed towards his opinions because most of the factual and evidence based questions could be answered by the book. The interview:

What have you learned about Healthcare over the years and do you believe anything has changed? How can people ensure they are getting the right medical information that helps them rather than harms them? Do you have any ideas on what can be done to help people not able to afford health insurance?

Unfortunately, the information in Overdosed America, published 12 years ago still stands. Before addressing how to obtain insurance when economically challenged, or get the most accurate medical information, the deeper problems with each must be addressed. It would be like asking how to do well on a test before reading the required materials. These are life-and-death serious questions that are all but ignored in our current healthcare debate. 

In your Introduction part of the book, it states you researched the consequences of providing health care to low-income inner-city residents through innovative HMO. What were the consequences? 

The most important finding was that when inner-city predominantly African-American families were allowed to join integrated suburban-oriented practices, their utilization of office, emergency room, and hospital services quickly transitioned from emergency room dominated care to primary care physician office dominated care. Along with this came a decrease in hospitalization rates of almost 90%.  The problem was that these families were the victims of de facto segregation, and were unable to access care like middle-class citizens.

In your opinion what are the deeper problems that should be addressed in our current healthcare debate?

The poor quality of the scientific evidence available to physicians and patients is an unrecognized and critically important problem. Doctors don't understand that--even when they avoid drug company marketing--the peer-reviewed clinical trial reports published in the medical journals upon which they rely for new information are primarily manufacturer-sponsored studies and the peer-reviewers and medical journal editors have not been granted access to the real underlying clinical trial data, rather they have to accept the submitted manuscript without verification. It would be like a court of law relying on hearsay evidence, which would never be allowed.

What other problem besides the corporate influence on medical science can you identify that has led to the corruption of medical science?

The transition in the US to corporations seeking to maximize shareholder value, over and above the totality of effect their business has on society, has created the larger context in which drug company corruption of science has become the norm. In a practical sense, the doctors are failing to fulfill their primary responsibility to act in the best interest of their patients by not insisting that the information published in medical journals has been independently verified.

Throughout your years of practice do you think the state America is in now concerning this matter of medical science being used for corporate interests is better or worse than before? 

The situation has become far worse, which led me to leave practice in 2002 to write Overdosed America, and has continued to move in a direction that serves corporate interests while the cost of healthcare skyrockets and the health of Americans continues to lose ground to the citizens of all the other wealthy countries.

What connections can you make between the corruption of medical science and the current healthcare system in place?

One could say, without a great deal of exaggeration, that the current healthcare system is optimally designed to allow the corporations to extract as much money as possible from working Americans rather than to optimize Americans' health most effectively and efficiently. Of course that is not to say that a) the vast majority of people working at all levels of healthcare in the US are dedicated to helping the people they serve; and b) that modern medicine is enormously beneficial, it's just that Americans don't get nearly as much benefit as the people in other countries.

If you were to compare health costs from when you wrote "Overdo$ed America" to now, what are some significant similarities and/or differences you've noticed? 

When I wrote OA, we were wasting about $500 billion per year, now that figure is up to $1.3 trillion per year: twice the annual budget of the Department of Defense, twice the federal budget deficit, and enough to retire all outstanding student debt in the US in one year.

Other than your book how have you raised awareness on the matter of medical science being corrupted?

Working with journalists and the media, teaching, and lecturing.

Have you ever confronted someone part of a medical journal that has given misleading information to its readers? If so how did it go?

Didn't go so well at all.

Who did you work with as you were researching the corruption in medical science? 

The internet has provided the opportunity for people who share interests to communicate with and support each other. This is very important because critical work does not have nearly the cache within academic circles as research that is more likely to produce or support profit-making activities.

In your book, you talk about medical journals and my question is are there any other sources doctors use to get information on the latest research?

There are other sources available, the best being FDA documents posted on the web. But these have not become a "normal" source of information, and therefore the journals become the standard basis for accepting information as fact.

Has your book ever been read by any federal healthcare executive? Do you plan on having any federal healthcare executive read your book?

Shortly after my book was published, I called the Senate Finance Committee--which was investigating Vioxx at the time--to tell them that I would be happy to share what I knew about Vioxx. The person who answered the call then yelled out in a busy room "Hey, they guy who wrote Overdosed America is on the phone. Who wants to talk to him?" That was a very productive relationship and left me understanding that one never knows how much influence something might have.