Our Daily Meds : PTSD Alliance created by PR firm working for Pfizer to sell more Zoloft

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Sunday, January 11, 2009 6:15 pm Email this article
" [ In many cases, it's the marketers, and not the scientists, who decide which drugs are right for the new you," Melody Petersen wrote in her new book called Our Daily Meds: How The Pharmaceutical Companies Transformed Themselves Into Slick Marketing Machines And Hooked The Nation On Prescription Drugs as told on Bill Moyers Journal on PBS.

"To boost sales of the antidepressant Zoloft, Pfizer sought to expand the potential market by commissioning studies that suggested the disorder PTSD, posttraumatic stress disorder, was not as rare as most believed.

"A few years back, I kept getting information from a group called PTSD alliance -- PTSD stands for posttraumatic stress disorder -- and one of the main messages of this group was that 5% of the American public suffered from PTSD.

"This estimate was millions and millions more in the government said actually suffered from this illness.

"And later I learned, this group wasn't actually what I thought it was.

"It was the creation of a public-relations firm working for Pfizer to sow more Zoloft.

"In fact, it was staffed by the public relations firm, and the offices have the same address as the public relations firm." Former New York Times Journalist

Melody former covered the drug industry for the New York Times

Melody, who formerly covered the drug industry for the New York Times, revealed this last Friday night, May 16th, 2008, in an interview with Bill Moyers on his PBS television program Journal.

REFERENCE

Petersen M. Our Daily Meds : How the Pharmaceutical Companies Transformed Themselves Into Slick Marketing Machines and Hooked the Nation on Prescription Drugs. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2008.

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