John Abramson
Author, physician
John David Abramson is an American physician and the author of the book Overdosed America: The Broken Promise of American Medicine. He has worked as a family doctor in Appalachia and in Hamilton, Massachusetts, and has served as chairman of the department of family practice at Lahey Clinic. He was a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Fellow and is on the clinical faculty of Harvard Medical School, where he teaches primary care and public health policy.
Education
He graduated from Harvard College. In 1974, he received a BMS from Dartmouth Medical School followed by his MD from Brown Medical School.
Career
In October 2013, Abramson was the lead author of an article published in The BMJ titled, "Should people at low risk of cardiovascular disease take a statin?" The authors claimed that a study had shown that a substantial percentage of statin drug users had experienced side effects. In May 2014, the journal published a "correction" that declared: "The conclusion and summary box of this Analysis article by Abramson and colleagues stated that side effects of statins occur in about 18-20% of patients. The authors withdraw this statement." On November 13, 2013, The New York Times published a commentary by Abramson and Rita F. Redberg which echoed the subsequently retracted BMJ claim that "18 percent or more of this group [of statin users] would experience side effects, including muscle pain or weakness, decreased cognitive function, increased risk of diabetes (especially for women), cataracts or sexual dysfunction."
Books
Sickening: How Big Pharma Broke American Health Care and How We Can Repair It. Mariner Books, 2022 ISBN 9780063268722
Overdosed America: The Broken Promise of American Medicine.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “John Abramson” is author, physician. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through John, Abramson and Author, not as a finished interpretation.
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Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 8, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q6218090. VIAF identifies the subject as 211110512. The Library of Congress control number is n2004006096. 1 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1974, 2013, 2014 and 2022.
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This entry incorporates text from “John Abramson” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.