Bad Pharma: How Drug Companies Mislead Doctors and Harm Patients

by Ben Goldacre

We like to imagine that medicine is based on evidence and the results of fair tests. In reality, those tests are often profoundly flawed. We like to imagine that doctors are familiar with the research literature about a drug, when in reality much of the research is hidden from them by drug companies. We like to imagine that doctors are impartially educated, when in reality much of their education is funded by the pharmaceutical industry. We like to imagine that regulators let only effective drugs onto the market, when in reality they approve useless drugs, with data on side effects casually withheld from doctors and patients. All these problems have been shielded from public scrutiny because they're too complex to capture in a sound bite. But Ben Goldacre shows that the true scale of this murderous disaster fully reveals itself only when the details are untangled. He believes we should all be able to understand precisely how data manipulation works and how research misconduct on a global scale affects us. This book reveals a shockingly broken system and calls for something to be done.--From publisher description.

• ISBN10: 0865478007
• ISBN13: 9780865478008
• Publish Date: 5 February 2013 (first published 25 September 2012)
• Publish Status: Out of Print
• Out of Print: 14 July 2016
• Publish Country: US
• Imprint: Faber & Faber
• Format: Hardcover
• Pages: 426
• Language: English

Reviews

[wyvernfriend]

We don't regulate our drugs and the drug companies enough and insist on ensuring that data about the edges of results, I begin to wonder if the drug companies had previous seen the side-effects I suffered with a blood pressure medication and if I could have avoided hundreds of euro in specialist fees in discovering this MYSELF!

Interesting look at how drug companies present their goods and how the love of money is indeed the root of many evils.