Few people in American history have saved more lives than Dr. Sidney Wolfe. Dr. Wolfe and his small staff at the Health Research Group of Public Citizen have taken on Big Pharma and the FDA to pull over two dozen dangerous drugs and countless hazardous medical devices off the market, not to mention putting numerous incompetent doctors out of business. Over the course of his storied career, Sid worked relentlessly for workplace safety and with his best-selling book and subsequent newsletter Worst Pills/Best Pills, provided the American people with the most reliable, up-to-date, evidence-based, easy-to-read guide to pharmaceuticals ever compiled. Today we pay tribute to the man who invented the concept of the “public interest doctor.”
Dr. Steffie Woolhandler is a co-founder of Physicians for a National Health Program, which is a non-profit research and education organization that advocates for single-payer national health insurance. Dr. Woolhandler is a practicing primary care physician, distinguished professor of public health and health policy in the City University of New York (CUNY) School of Public Health, an adjunct professor at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, and lecturer in medicine at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Woolhandler has authored more than 150 journal articles, reviews, chapters, and books on health policy.
Dr. David Himmelstein is a co-founder of Physicians for a National Health Program. Dr. Himmelstein is a practicing primary care physician, distinguished professor of public health at the City University of New York, a lecturer at Harvard Medical School, and has more than 150 peer reviewed studies in widely cited articles — appearing in the New England Journal, Annals of Internal Medicine, JAMA, Health Affairs, and the American Journal of Public Health — on the excess death rate among the uninsured, medical bankruptcy, health care administrative costs, insurance firms’ misbehaviors, and dangerous medications.