Martha Rosenberg, AlterNet

After an 18-month investigation into the high cost of Gilead's hepatitis C drug Sovaldi—initially listed at $84,000 for a course of treatment or $1,000 per pill—the Senate Finance Committee said the prices did not reflect the cost of research and development and that Gilead cared about "revenue" not "affordability and accessibility." That sounds like an understatement. Sovaldi and the related pill Harvoni cost Medicare and Medicaid more than $5 billion in 2014, charged senators.

It happened on Black Friday 2014, at Nordstrom's on Chicago’s Magnificent Mile. Horrified shoppers watched as store employee Nadia Ezaldein was shot in the head at the accessories counter by her estranged ex-boyfriend, Marcus Dee, who then turned the gun on himself. Ezaldein was a 22-year-old University of Chicago student. Black Friday was her birthday. She died the next day.

Since direct-to-consumer drug advertising debuted in 1997, pharma's credo has been When The Medication Is Ready, The Disease (and Patients) Will Appear. Who knew so many people suffered from restless legs? Now pharma is back to creating new diseases, patients, risks and "awareness campaigns." Check out these eight new diseases they've invented.

This latest campaign "encourages people to gradually eat less meat with respect to their own diet."

Does anyone remember life before Viagra? In 1997, no one had heard of or used the term erectile dysfunction or ED--nor would most men have admitted to having the condition. Before the sanitized term debuted, ED was known by doctors as "impotence" and by the rest of us as "not getting it up." It was usually blamed on circumstances like too much to drink and men and their partners rarely talked about it.