Bad Pharma

Description

Bad Science hilariously exposed the tricks that quacks and journalists use to distort science, becoming an international bestseller. Now Ben Goldacre puts the $600bn global pharmaceutical industry under the microscope. What he reveals is a fascinating, terrifying mess.
   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 pharmaceutical 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. Ben Goldacre, however, 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. 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.

Praise for Bad Pharma“Goldacre uncovers a cesspool of corrupt practices designed to sell useless or dangerous drugs to an unsuspecting public. . . . A smart, infuriating diagnosis of the rotten heart of the medical-industrial complex.” – Publishers Weekly“A scathing critique of the modus operandi of drug research. . . . Bad Pharma could very well be the book that initiates a game-changing global rethink of what we expect from medicine.” – Globe and Mail

BEN GOLDACRE is a British doctor, academic, writer, and broadcaster. He wrote the Bad Science column for The Guardian from 2003 to 2011, where he discussed topics such as pseudoscience and the misuse of science in media. He is now the Senior Clinical Research Fellow at the Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine at Oxford. His first book, Bad Science, was an international bestseller and has been translated into twenty-five languages, and he is the author of three other books. Goldacre has been awarded many honours, including being named a Member of the Order of the British Empire in 2018. He lives in London.

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