How many of those people would trade the portfolio of medications available today for those available in 1955?

Nobody, of course. But would you prefer not to have drugs of dubious effectiveness marketed like consumer products? It's not an either or choice.

I would definitely prefer not to have chemical compounds that haven't been demonstrated effective marketed as consumer medical products. I'm not sure how that connects to the thread, though.

> demonstrated effective

While there are some drugs that are clearly effective, there are big problems in Big Pharma's approach to clinical trials, including burying half the trials' results and poor experiment design. And once a drug makes it to market, expanding that market without testing becomes a priority. Do you think Risperdal was a one-off, or is it a representative case study of how drugs are marketed by at least a major part of Big Pharma?

Yes, those people don't experiment with dangerous chemicals, instead they happily give their dollars to big placebo!

Being cynical about 'Big Pharma' does not mean that you support <insert pseudoscience/buzzword category here> placebos, and does not mean that you do not support honest scientific efforts.

For example, Ben Goldacre. He is cynical about 'Big Pharma', and has written about it in one of his books[0]. At the same time he appears to support efforts to open up private medical research -- he recently cofounded AllTrials[2] along with the BMJ, Cochrane, PLOS, and a few other high-profile reputable sources[3].

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bad_Pharma [1]: http://www.cochrane.org/ [2]: http://www.alltrials.net/ [3]: http://www.phc.ox.ac.uk/news/ben-goldacre-joins-oxford-unive...