This hard-hitting exposé blows the lid off of everything you thought you knew about Big Pharma and Big Food. What goes on behind the scenes in these industries is more suspicious, more devious, more disreputable than you could have ever imagined. Rosenberg’s message is clear: the pharmaceutical and agricultural industries are tainting public health through marketing disguised as medical education and research, aggressive lobbying, and high-level conflicts of interest. If you’re concerned about the safety of the drugs you take and the food you eat, you owe it to yourself to read this important book.
-Why is a drug tainted by eight corruption scandals, two illegal marketing settlements, and escalating troop deaths still a best seller—with sales actually increasing 700 percent in the 2000s? Why were the dangerous side effects of a drug frequently prescribed to soldiers kept hush-­hush in order to please Wall Street? And why have Big Pharma, the government, and the medical establishment turned a blind eye to patients who fall victim to suicide as a result of antidepressants and other psychoactive drugs?
-Why are women given largely unnecessary bone scans to help sell Big Pharma drugs that are linked to jawbone deterioration, esophageal cancer, and the very fractures the drugs are supposed to prevent?
-Why was the Teflon Chicken Don—a man who was allegedly responsible for the biggest egg recall in US history in 2010 and nine related deaths, and who was cited with health, safety, and environmental violations since 1977—never punished and allowed a gracious retirement?
-And why are Americans unwittingly eating beef, pork, and poultry raised with a growth-producing asthma drug—a drug perceived as so dangerous it has been banned in 160 countries—that is not withdrawn from the animals’ systems prior to slaughter?
Having gained the trust of more than twenty doctors, researchers, and experts who were willing to come forward and finally tell all, reporter and editorial cartoonist Rosenberg presents us with her shocking findings. Explosive material from whistle-blowers, scientists, unsealed lawsuits, and Big Pharma’s and Big Food’s own marketers exposes how these industries put profits before public safety and how the government puts the interests of business before the welfare of consumers, creating a double whammy that "pimps" the public health. What Rosenberg reveals about government complicity, regulatory food- and drug-safety lapses, and legislative injustices will both shock and appall. Why have federal meat inspectors become pathetic figureheads in the nation’s slaughterhouses, laughed at by plant managers? Why are medical articles that have been exposed in lawsuits as fraudulent still standing and not retracted? Why was meat possibly containing the United States’ first mad cow sold to five California restaurants when the government said it wasn’t? And why are parents giving their one-year-olds acid reflux medications and their three-year-olds bipolar disorder medications? You’ll find the answers to these and many more disturbing questions in this revealing book.

• April 2013 Indie Next List
• March 2013 Indie Next List
• February 2013 Indie Next List