My initial response was to write off these points as misleading, or not representative of the truth.
Patients are harmed in huge numbers.īen 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.Īs someone who has worked in the clinical trials and now works in academia, there were times when the points made by Dr Goldacre were uncomfortable. What we trust to cure us may be ineffectual or actually harmful. Its offences are countless and the consequences are felt by us all.
Patients' pressure groups are covertly sponsored by pill manufacturers. It distorts and suppresses the results of clinical trials if they are unfavourable.
New diseases are invented in order to swell profits. The pharmaceutical industry spends more on marketing than it does on research and development. Instead, they take money and favours, in a world so fractured that medics and nurses are now educated by the drugs industry. Doctors and patient groups have stood by too, and failed to protect us. In fact, even government regulators withhold vitally important data from the people who need it most. When these trials produce unflattering results, the data is simply buried. But instead, companies run bad trials on their own drugs, which distort and exaggerate the benefits by design.
What he reveals is a fascinating, terrifying mess.ĭoctors and patients need good scientific evidence to make informed decisions. Now Ben Goldacre puts the $600bn global pharmaceutical industry under the microscope. 'Bad Science’ hilariously exposed the tricks that quacks and journalists use to distort science, becoming a 400,000 copy bestseller. Shortlisted for: Popular Non-Fiction Book of the Year – Specsavers National Book Awards 2012
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