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Saturday, September 13, 2008

Irving Wallace - The Seven Minutes and Pharmaceutical Industry

"By comparison with the reality, my story [is] as tame as a holiday postcard." wrote John le Carré in the afterword of his novel "The Constant Gardener" that was turned into a movie by the Brazilian film-maker Fernando Meirelles.
In 1969 "The Seven Minutes" was published. At the beginning of the novel Irving Wallace, in the voice of his narrator, raises the issue of lethal side effects and the power of pharmaceutical industry in covering it all.
The personage Barret lost her mother because she took a drug that caused aplastic anemia and he found out that other people had also died of the same cause but he could not make justice because the laboratory was one of the sponsors of the Institute Barret was working.
These are literary examples but there are many sitcoms, series, movies, songs and others that raises the medication problems.
People don't trust medicine or have many tips to start getting suspicious.


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