There is something so biologically implausible that your attitude is going to cure a disease. Theres a tremendous arrogance to imagine that your mind is all that powerful.
Marcia AngellYou 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 AngellPharmaceutical companies have too much influence over the education of physicians in this country. They have too much control over the evaluation of their own products, and that's a conflict of interest. I think the industry needs to be regulated, but I've never suggested taking it out of the market altogether.
Marcia AngellFew things a doctor does are more important than relieving pain. . . pain is soul destroying. No patient should have to endure intense pain unnecessarily. The quality of mercy is essential to the practice of medicine; here, of all places, it should not be strained.
Marcia AngellBrand-name drugs have no competition, since the government grants them very long, exclusive marketing rights.
Marcia AngellIt 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. I take no pleasure in this conclusion, which I reached slowly and reluctantly over my two decades as an editor of The New England Journal of Medicine.
Marcia Angell