Editor’s note: Dr. Carl Elliott, an M.D. and Ph.D., is the author of ”White Coat, Black Hat: Adventures on the Dark Side of Medicine” (Beacon Press, 2010).
(CNN) -- If you want to understand the way prescription drugs are marketed today, have a look at the 1928 book, ”Propaganda,” by Edward Bernays, the father of public relations in America.
For Bernays, the public relations business was less about selling things than about creating the conditions for things to sell themselves. When Bernays was working as a salesman for Mozart pianos, for example, he did not simply place advertisemen ...
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