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Strong Medicine by Arthur Hailey

         I read an older book by Arthur Hailey, the same guy who wrote Hotel and Airport. It's called Strong Medicine and takes a deep look at the pharmaceutical industry from the late 50's to the mid 80's through the life of a female employee.It's very detailed and educational. I imagine a lot of research went into the writing.

         The protagonist is is the perfect woman, the one idealized by the "woman's movement". She starts out as a beautiful (what else) college graduate working as a "detail" person for a big pharmaceutical. She calls on doctor's to push her wares and give free samples. She meets a single doctor, about ten years older, handsome, dedicated to his job and patients, who hates prescribing unnecessary drugs. He doesn't like detail people, but she's determined and after demonstrating she's knowledgeable and gives a drug that actually helps his patient, she asserts herself on him as well. They fall madly in love and stay together through the raising of two wonderfully bright and successful children. Her personal life and career thrive.

         A beautiful love story, where the woman rises to the top of her company through hard work and diligence, she remains beautiful as she ages, the husband remains successful, handsome, and faithful, right? Right. There are troubles along the way with the business, some early prejudice against her in a man's job, but no problems with her marriage or her kids or home. She's a little too perfect for my tastes. Her life is just a little too charmed. They just keep getting richer and more spoiled. The one wrong thing she does is to cheat on her perfectly understanding, patient, supportive, handsome husband. And she gets away with it. She never pays for it with a moment of guilt or anything. Now how is that for the perfect woman with the perfect life? Have your cake and eat it, too.

         Everyone else who does anything a little shady in the book pays for it in big ways. The moral of the story, if there is one, is that, yes, big pharma makes mistakes and a lot of money. It puts out drugs occasionally that do a lot of damage. They keep you on drugs you don't need (with the help of doctors), and sell over the counter things that only help you emotionally, not physically. But then they also provide life saving drugs and break-throughs that improve the quality of living, like blood pressure pills and meds for aging mentally or stop the flu, shingles, or polio, and so forth. The benefits have outweighed the negatives. And the pharmaceuticals, which are heavily regulated, are dependent on the physicians and patients themselves to be ethical and practice self-control and healthy lifestyles.