3 Review(s)

Bad Pharma: How Drug Companies Mislead Doctors And Harm Patients is a book that scrutinizes pharmaceutical industries, exposing the hold that it has over academic research related to its products, and the several ways in which it exploits customers using distorted science. Summary Of The Book In this eye-opening text, the author asserts that clinical trials conducted by drug research companies normally always favour the pharmaceutical companies that manufactured it. He discusses the several ways in which the aforementioned is achieved, exemplifying recent additions to the drug list and the research that went into them. He then discusses the various phases of clinical trials, and the concept of regulatory capture, wherein a regulatory body such as the FDA in America ends up favoring the drug companies instead of the interest of the general public. Bad Pharma: How Drug Companies Mislead Doctors And Harm Patients commences with a basic introduction, spans over six chapters, namely, Missing Data, Bad Trials, Bad Regulators, Where Do New Drugs Come From, Bigger, Simpler Trials, and Marketing, and finally culminates with an afterword. The author suggests the use of bigger and simpler trials in the sense that randomized trials should be conducted amidst several million anonymous patients to determine the effectiveness of the medicine. The fact that most practitioners and doctors prescribe medicines made by multi-billion pharmaceutical companies instead of their cheaper versions available in the market has also been discussed, in addition to several others aspects that have been shielded from public scrutiny. Bad Pharma: How Drug Companies Mislead Doctors And Harm Patients was first published in the UK in 2012 and a few months later in the United States in February 2013. It gives a witty insight into the broken system of drug research and manufacturing, and its major flaws. About Ben Goldacre Ben Michael Goldacre is a British author, academician, and physician. He has authored another book called Bad Science. Goldacre studied preclinical medicine at Magdalen College, Oxford, in 1995, and went on to study clinical medicine at University College London Medical School, becoming a legitimate doctor in 2000. He is a member of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, and was recently the Wellcome Research Fellow at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine in Epidemiology. He has been the recipient of several awards like the Association of British Science Writers award for Best Feature 2003, Freelance of 2006 at the Medical Journalism Awards, Honorary Doctor of Science at Loughborough University and Heriot-Watt University, among others.