The off-label scam for prescription drugs

Kevin Drum has a good post. It begins:

As the sun was setting on the final days of the Bush administration, they left us with one final gift: a new rule that made it easier for drug manufacturers to promote "off-label" prescription drug uses. The pharmaceutical industry loves this, of course, and they spend millions of dollars promoting their latest narrowly targeted wonder drugs to a wider audience while pretending they’re doing no such thing. Blue Girl explains:

The problem is, the system has become corrupted and drug companies do their own "research," get it published, and then promote the off-label uses that their "research" showed was effective. A really common one is to prescribe antidepressants for …

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