Bad Pharma: How Medicine is Broken, and How We Can Fix It

Description

'Bad Science' hilariously exposed the tricks that quacks and journalists use to distort science, becoming a 400,000 copy bestseller. Now Ben Goldacre puts the $600bn global pharmaceutical industry under the microscope. What he reveals is a fascinating, terrifying mess. Doctors and patients need good scientific evidence to make informed decisions. But instead, companies run bad trials on their own drugs, which distort and exaggerate the benefits by design. When these trials produce unflattering results, the data is simply buried. All of this is perfectly legal. In fact, even government regulators withhold vitally important data from the people who need it most. Doctors and patient groups have stood by too, and failed to protect us. Instead, they take money and favours, in a world so fractured that medics and nurses are now educated by the drugs industry. Patients are harmed in huge numbers. Ben Goldacre is Britain's finest writer on the science behind medicine, and 'Bad Pharma' is a clear and witty attack, showing exactly how the science has been distorted, how our systems have been broken, and how easy it would be to fix them.

Ben Goldacre is a doctor and science writer who wrote the 'Bad Science' column in the Guardian from 2003 to 2011. His work focuses on unpicking the evidence behind misleading claims from journalists, the pharmaceutical industry, alternative therapists, and government reports. He has made a number of documentaries for BBC Radio 4, and his first book Bad Science reached Number One in the nonfiction charts, has sold 400,000 copies, and has been translated into 17 languages. His second bestselling book, Bad Pharma, was published in 2013.

'This is a book to make you enraged - properly, bone-shakingly furious - because it's about how big business puts profits over patient welfare, allows people to die because they don't want to disclose damning research evidence, and the tricks they play to make sure doctors do not have all the evidence when it comes to appraising whether a drug really works or not. A work of brilliance.' Max Pemberton, Daily Telegraph 'This is a brilliant piece of work' Evening Standard, William Leith 'This is an important book. Ben Goldacre is angry, and by the time you put 'Bad Pharma' down, you should be too.' New Statesman 'Nailing the compromise between too much detail and too little, Goldacre's brilliantly enraging study unpeels how the pharmaceutical giants routinely misrepresent science in their quest for profit.' Sunday Telegraph 'What keeps you turning its pages is the accessibility of Goldacre's writing ... his genuine, indignant passion, his careful gathering of evidence and his use of stories, some of them personal, which bring the book to life.' Luisia Dilner, Guardian 'This is a book that deserves to be widely read, because anyone who does read it cannot help feeling both uncomfortable and angry.' Economist ''Bad Pharma' will confirm his status as a thorn in the side of the medical Establishment - Goldacre's detailed research would be hard for any drug-company executive to contradict' Lois Rogers, Sunday Times