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show first aired June 19, 2007
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For years there have been grumblings about the influence big pharmaceutical companies have on the American health care system. But those companies have had a lot of help getting that influence. On this week’s Health Show we’ll find out how doctors and big pharma have been playing together. We’ll also learn about the evolution of pain medication, and how better meds have led to more relief...and abuse. And we’ll look at a book that remember a time when your meds all grew in your back yard.
listen to this story in RealAudio 25:00
Are Doctors HOOKED On Pharma's Perks?
You have probably seen them over the years at your doctor’s office; pharmaceutical sales reps sitting with their briefcases waiting for a chance to show off the newest wonder drugs to the people who prescribe them. Now, though, some people believe that doctors have become much too dependent on these representatives of the drug companies and much too willing to take whatever is being handed out as inducements to prescribe their products. The Health Show’s Jim Horne spoke with Dr. Howard Brody, a physician and a professor holding the John P McGovern Centennial Chair in Family Medicine at the University of Texas Medical Branch and Director of the school’s Institute for the Medical Humanities. He is author of Hooked: Ethics, the Medical Profession, and the Pharmaceutical Industry.
Dr. Stephanie Beling on Pain Meds
One of the big changes in patient care philosophy over the years has been the evolving role of pain medication. But with the expanded use of pains meds comes the growing opportunities for abuse. Here to talk about this is The Health Show’s Diet & Lifestyle Consultant Dr. Stephanie Beling. Bob Barrett asked Dr. Beling if it’s almost as if doctors are trying to make up for past policies by now making meds easy to get and use.
Olde Tyme Health
There was a time when choice of pain medications wasn’t really an issue. There are a lot of old books in the University of Alabama at Birmingham’s Reynolds Historical Library, some 13-thousand in all. One, though, stands out a bit more than the others. Only five copies of “The English Physician” are in existence today and U-A-B has one of them. It’s a book that, as Rosemary Pennington found out, helped shape what would one day become the United States of America.
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