Publisher Description
Medicine is broken. We like to imagine that it’s 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 surrounding 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 industry. We like to imagine that regulators let only effective drugs onto the market, when in reality they approve hopeless drugs, with data on side effects casually withheld from doctors and patients.
All these problems have been protected from public scrutiny because they’re too complex to capture in a sound bite. But Dr. 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. In his own words, “the tricks and distortions documented in these pages are beautiful, intricate, and fascinating in their details.” With Goldacre’s characteristic flair and a forensic attention to detail, Bad Pharma reveals a shockingly broken system and calls for something to be done. This is the pharmaceutical industry as it has never been seen before.
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“This is a very important book that every doctor and every patient should read. The author explains the drug trials that result in medicines (often of no or doubtful use) being approved for prescription and sale, in the USA and elsewhere. The pharmaceutical industry often pays for tests and then hides any negative results, picking and choosing which trials should be published in order to make their new products look good, and doctors are only told what the manufacturers want them to hear. Many research papers by reputable scientists are routinely buried in the no-man’s-land of unpublished documents. Attempts by scientists to provide better access to more complete information about products, such as establishing a registry of trials to be run on a product, are often circumvented by the industry. Results from contracted trials, and university trials, paid for by Big Pharma, become proprietary and unfavorable data are hidden from doctors and from the public. This is all about money and patents, and about getting doctors to prescribe an expensive new drug even when it’s no better than, or inferior to, and existing drug whose patent has run out and is now cheaper for the patient. It’s scary. I recommend it. Not for fun, but because we need to know.”
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Barbm1020Â (5 out of 5 stars)
