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Marcia Angell Quotes

Powerful Marcia Angell for Daily Growth

About Marcia Angell

Marcia Angell (born April 14, 1939) is an esteemed American physician, academic, editor, and writer who has made significant contributions to the field of medicine, particularly in the areas of public health, ethics, and the pharmaceutical industry. Born in New York City, Angell grew up in a Jewish family with a strong emphasis on education. She earned her undergraduate degree from Radcliffe College and later received her medical degree from Harvard Medical School. Her early career included work as a researcher at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and as a physician at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH). In 1989, Angell was appointed the first woman Editor-in-Chief of The New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM), a position she held for twenty years. During her tenure, she steered the journal to become one of the most influential and respected in the medical field. Angell's writings often critiqued the pharmaceutical industry, particularly its role in influencing medical research and practice. Her best-known work, "The Truth about the Drug Companies: How They Deceive Us and What to Do About It" (2004), offers a scathing critique of the industry's practices. The book brought her both controversy and acclaim for her frank analysis of conflicts of interest in medical research and pharmaceutical marketing. Angell's work has also focused on public health issues such as tobacco control, mental health, and health care reform. After leaving NEJM, she joined the faculty at Harvard Medical School, where she continues to teach and write on various topics related to medicine and public health. Her influence in these areas is evident in her numerous publications and her role as a trusted voice in debates about the ethics of medicine and the pharmaceutical industry.

Interpretations of Popular Quotes

"The medical profession is being torn apart by a conflict between its traditional role as healer and its new role as marketer."

The quote by Marcia Angell highlights a significant tension that has arisen in the medical profession. Traditionally, physicians have been dedicated to healing patients through empathy, knowledge, and skill. However, with the increasing influence of profit-driven motivations in healthcare, such as pharmaceutical marketing and insurance industry pressures, they are being transformed into marketers - prioritizing sales over patient care. This shift has led to concerns about the integrity of medicine, as doctors may feel compelled to prescribe certain treatments due to financial incentives rather than what is best for their patients. It's a delicate balance between maintaining the noble ideals of healing and adapting to modern healthcare realities.

"It is simply no longer possible to believe much of the clinical research that is published, or to rely on the judgment of trusted physicians or authoritative medical guidelines."

This quote underscores a profound skepticism about the reliability of published medical research and expert guidance in the field of medicine. Marcia Angell suggests that the current state of clinical research may be so flawed, biased, or misleading that it is no longer trustworthy, casting doubt on the validity of published findings and the authority of established medical opinion. This critique can be seen as a call for greater transparency, integrity, and rigor in scientific research to ensure that healthcare professionals and patients alike can rely on evidence-based medicine for making informed decisions about health and treatment options.

"Science is not only a systematic way of gaining knowledge about the natural world but also a powerful cultural force with its own values and biases."

Marcia Angell's quote underscores that science, beyond being a method for acquiring knowledge about nature, carries significant cultural influence, shaped by inherent values and biases. This implies that scientific findings are not purely objective but can be influenced by societal norms, beliefs, and vested interests, making it crucial to approach scientific discoveries with a discerning eye.

"Medicine has been taken over by big business, in which science is reduced to an auxiliary of marketing."

This quote by Marcia Angell highlights a concern about the corporate influence on medicine and healthcare research. She suggests that the pursuit of science for its own sake has been overshadowed by the drive for profit, leading to the reduction of scientific discovery to mere tools for marketing products. In essence, she's implying that the interests of big business are prioritized over the public health and wellbeing, which can have detrimental effects on the quality and accessibility of healthcare.

"The pharmaceutical industry uses its wealth and power to co-opt not only other medical practitioners but also medical schools and the National Institutes of Health."

Marcia Angell's statement suggests that the pharmaceutical industry wields significant influence, both financially and politically, over medical professionals, educational institutions like medical schools, and research organizations such as the NIH (National Institutes of Health). This control can lead to biased information, research, and practices that favor the interests of the pharmaceutical industry rather than the unbiased pursuit of patient health and wellbeing.

Probably most dying patients, even when suffering greatly, would choose to live as long as possible. That courage and grace should be protected and honored, and we should put every effort into treating their symptoms.

- Marcia Angell

Effort, Suffering, Choose, Treating

Health care is a need; it's not a commodity, and it should be distributed according to need. If you're very sick, you should have a lot of it. If you're not sick, you shouldn't have a lot of it.

- Marcia Angell

Need, Very, Commodity, Distributed

It's not just the right-wing crazies who oppose health reform. In addition, there are many sane Americans who worry about committing a trillion dollars to it.

- Marcia Angell

Worry, About, Committing, Health Reform

Liberals are wrong to think that opposition to health reform is a rejection of big government. If health reform consisted of extending Medicare to everyone, people would be delighted. There are millions of 64-year-olds out there who can hardly wait to be 65.

- Marcia Angell

Wait, Big, Out, Health Reform

When death is imminent and dying patients find their suffering unbearable, then the physician's role should shift from healing to relieving suffering in accord with the patient's wishes.

- Marcia Angell

Death, Role, Imminent, Relieving

There's a certain libertarian right-wing view that there should be no FDA, that people can decide for themselves whether medicines are safe and effective. That's nonsense. Most people don't have the expertise or the resources to mount a proper study to find out whether a treatment is safe or effective.

- Marcia Angell

Study, Treatment, Medicines, Mount

Drug companies say they need to charge ever-higher prices to cover their research costs, but they spend far less on research and development than they do on marketing and administration, and afterwards they actually keep more in profits.

- Marcia Angell

Research, Administration, Drug Companies

I think doctors are really suffering now. They're suffering in the sense that they feel torn between serving their patients in the best way they can and dealing with all of requirements of the insurance companies and the HMOs and the hassles and the paper work and the increasing pressures to do less and less for their patients.

- Marcia Angell

Insurance, Torn, Best Way, Hassle

Just look at herbal remedies. It's essentially a throwback. It's saying you go to a plant and you mush it up and you stick it in the jar and you sell it and you eat it and it's going to cure what ails you. And that's the kind of stuff that people believed in the early 19th century.

- Marcia Angell

Eat, Cure, 19th Century, Mush

The United States is the only advanced country that permits the pharmaceutical industry to charge exactly what the market will bear, whatever it wants.

- Marcia Angell

Country, United States, Permits

In economic terms, health care is a highly successful industry - profitable, growing, and virtually recession-proof - but it's a massive burden on the rest of the economy.

- Marcia Angell

Rest, Virtually, Profitable, Highly

You see that the people who are drawn to alternative medicine are often fairly healthy and they go to alternative medicine for what I call the 'symptoms of life.' Fatigue, joint pains, inability to concentrate, perhaps, the kinds of things that anyone over twenty-five gets at some point.

- Marcia Angell

Some, Pains, Joint, Concentrate

Obamacare is simply incapable of doing what it is supposed to do - provide nearly universal care at an affordable and sustainable cost.

- Marcia Angell

Doing, Affordable, Obamacare, Incapable

Illness and death are not optional. Patients have a right to determine how they approach them.

- Marcia Angell

Death, How, Determine, Illness

The pharmaceutical industry likes to depict itself as a research-based industry, as the source of innovative drugs. Nothing could be further from the truth. This is their incredible PR and their nerve.

- Marcia Angell

Pharmaceutical, Depict, Nerve

For all of life's discontents, according to the pharmaceutical industry, there is a drug and you should take it. Then for the side effects of that drug, then there's another drug, and so on. So we're all taking more drugs, and more expensive drugs.

- Marcia Angell

More, Pharmaceutical, Side, Taking

Unlike the federal government, most states don't have the option of running a deficit.

- Marcia Angell

Government, Running, Most, Deficit

The pharmaceutical industry isn't the only place where there's waste and inefficiency and profiteering. That happens in much of the rest of the health care industry.

- Marcia Angell

Rest, Waste, Pharmaceutical, Inefficiency

Japan has very long hospital stays. Ah, it's almost a rest cure. People in Japan who are hospitalized might lie around the hospital for a week or two just to take a rest.

- Marcia Angell

Rest, Week, Very, Hospital

Alternative medicine plays into this exaggerated notion that you can prevent disease simply by doing the right thing.

- Marcia Angell

Doing, Disease, Plays, Simply

There is something so biologically implausible that your attitude is going to cure a disease. There's a tremendous arrogance to imagine that your mind is all that powerful.

- Marcia Angell

Mind, Disease, Imagine, Biologically

Brand-name drugs have no competition, since the government grants them very long, exclusive marketing rights.

- Marcia Angell

Marketing, Very, Grants, Competition

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