It was my first and what would end up to being my most important interview to promote my book, "What Your Doctor Won't (or Can't) Tell You." I was invited to talk live on the Today Show with Ann Curry. I was quite anxious about going before the cameras but determined to tell my story. I know folks might think I wrote the book just to make money or to promote myself -- a not surprising thought from some of the cynical souls out there -- but for me it was all about telling a story that needed to be told.
But when I was interviewed by the producer of the segment, two days prior to the interview, she warned me in no uncertain terms not to discuss anything about the pharmaceutical industry. No doubt naive, I tried to convince her that my chapter on Big Pharma was the best and most enlightening -- and probably most damning -- portion of my book. But she was emphatic. No one would be interested in it. I was not to discuss it.
Yet I am such an iconoclast that I became more concerned with the producer’s attempted censorship than with selling my book. So when I sat down with Ann Curry a few minutes before the interview, I told her about the producer's warning and asked her if that was because so many of the Today Show’s commercials were paid for by Big Pharma.
Ms. Curry, I remember, seemed quite offended by my question and told me I could discuss anything I thought was relevant to my book. And so when she asked me her first question, carefully scripted by her producers, I managed to talk about the pharmaceutical companies and the expensive, though not always superior, medications they coax some doctors into prescribing.
I did not hear her scream, but I suspect the producer was apoplectic. Ann was very professional and courteous during the remainder of the interview, but I left wondering if I had just screwed myself and my publisher by not playing the game. As it was, the “live” interview had been taped because of breaking coverage of one of the wars going on.
Several days later, while I was out on my book tour, both my agent and my publisher called to let me know that the folks at NBC thought that I performed so poorly on my interview that they could not televise it. A week later, however, my agent called me to tell me he had reviewed the DVD of the interview and thought I had done very well. And then I realized what had likely happened. I had opened up my foolish iconoclastic mouth and violated a taboo (don't talk about Big Pharma) and the punishment for that was to have my interview placed on a shelf instead of on the air.
Getting to Ann Curry, the only person who could help me, was not an easy task, as my agent and publisher had pretty much called it a day a week after my publication date. But like any street-smart Brooklyn boy would, I figured I could send her a message in the form of a huge floral arrangement. And so with a quick call to 1-800-Flowers I ordered a huge assortment of flowers and left a message that said, “Ann, I thought you said I could talk about anything I wanted to. Thanks, Dr. Evan Levine."
A day later the interview aired on the Today Show, although the staff never gave a courtesy heads up to anyone at Putnam Publishing, to my agent or even to me. The interview is now on Youtube. Readers, you be the judges. Let me know if I did so poorly that the piece should not have been televised.
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Comments
I did a [a href="http://open.salon.com/blog/sickofstupid">series on healthcare a while back, which I'm planning to revisit in the near future. Big Pharma will figure prominently, as will the dirty secrets of the private insurance industry, the REAL causes of rising healthcare costs, and how to implement single-payer universal healthcare that increases access, quality of care and choices without increasing taxes, harming providers or patients, and stimulates the economy, to boot. Hope you stop by.
People DO need to know about this stuff, especially that their providers often know very little about the new drugs they're prescribing, other than what the drug reps--salespeople that are usually not medically trained--tell them. Big Pharma is a HUGE problem in so many ways; this desperately needs to be exposed.
Not ALL drugs are bad, of course, but it seems like there are an awful lot of flawed drugs on the market that cause worse conditions than the conditions the drug is supposed to treat. If these drugs are approved, what incentive do the makers have to improve them by eliminating those side effects?
We need pharmaceutical companies. We need firetruck manufacturers. We need both to make a profit and employ people. We need competition in a free market to spawn the development of better drugs and firetrucks. There is no argument on that.
But we need to come to our senses and change our medical model to one that resembles our fire prevention model, a public system that is focused on the prevention of illness, not one that is focused on sales/profits/and ROI to investors.
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