Behind every prescription drug is a story. And it is rarely the sunny beach scene with jazz flute you are sold in the ads. On a recent episode of Causes or Cures, I talk with Dr. Jerry Avorn, a Harvard Medical School professor, longtime drug-safety watchdog, and author of Rethinking Medications: Truth, Power, and the Drugs You Take. He pulls back the curtain on the forces that shape which drugs get approved, how quickly they hit the market, what they cost, and how much or how little we really know about their safety.
If you have ever wondered why new drugs seem to launch at lightning speed, why the side effects list scrolls on longer than your grocery receipt, or why something your tax dollars helped fund ends up costing you a fortune, this episode is for you.
We talk about:
- Why the system rewards speed over evidence, and how “accelerated approval” can backfire.
- The rise of drugs approved on flimsy or surrogate endpoints, yet priced like gold.
- Case studies that shook medicine, like the Vioxx heart attack scandal and the controversial Alzheimer’s drug Aduhelm.
- The FDA’s uneasy shift from watchdog to, at times, lapdog.
- Conflicts of interest in medicine and regulation.
- How taxpayer money often funds the science, while private companies pocket the profits.
- And what the “Do Your Own Research” crowd gets right and wrong.
Dr. Avorn’s mission is clear: to help patients and doctors actually understand what they are prescribing or swallowing and to show the powerful forces shaping those choices.
Why listen? Because medications are never just about chemistry. They are also about politics, profit, and power. Knowing the story behind the pill in your hand could save more than your wallet.
Links & Resources:
📖 Grab the book: Rethinking Medications: Truth, Power, and the Drugs You Take (Simon & Schuster, 2025)
Who is Dr. Avorn?
Jerry Avorn, MD, is a Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and a senior internist at Mass General Brigham. He founded a leading research center at Harvard to study medication use, outcomes, costs, and policy, and pioneered “academic detailing,” an evidence-based approach that delivers prescribing information directly to clinicians. He is the author of Powerful Medicines: The Benefits, Risks, and Costs of Prescription Drugs and has written or co-written over 600 scientific papers, as well as commentaries in The New York Times, The Washington Post, JAMA, and The New England Journal of Medicine.
Tune in to Rethinking Medications Here!
You can also listen on Youtube Now! (And While You’re there, Hope You Subscribe! :) )
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