Bad Pharma

How Drug Companies Mislead Doctors and Harm Patients

De: Ben Goldacre

Narrado por: Jot Davies

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.

The pharmaceutical industry spends more on marketing than it does on research and development. New diseases are invented in order to swell profits. It distorts and suppresses the results of clinical trials if they are unfavourable. Patients' pressure groups are covertly sponsored by pill manufacturers. Its offences are countless and the consequences are felt by us all. What we trust to cure us may be ineffectual or actually harmful. 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.

©2012 Ben Goldacre (P)2012 W F Howes Ltd

A must hear

Can’t recommend this enough - great on all fronts! A highly important topic communicated highly effectively.

Frightening and illuminating

Bad Pharma tells the story of how we know way too little about the drugs we use every day. The author describes complex research in an easily understandable way, and is straight forward about his opinions.

The narrator is excellent, reading the book as if he had written it himself. In portions of the book where the author writes about especially infuriating topics, the narrators voice becomes angry, reflecting the anger of the listener as one realises that the pharmaceutical industry will go to great lengths to sell their drugs.

Ben Goldacre: The gentlest assassin

What made the experience of listening to Bad Pharma the most enjoyable?

So this broke my heart, but it is informative and reasoned and complete and gently worded and...you can't easily fault it, except that it will tell you things that you don't want to know.

If you were to make a film of this book, what would the tag line be?

We don't know anything we think we know about drugs...and that is terrifying.

Any additional comments?

This is a harder ride than Bad Science, but it was worth it.

Excellent

Brilliant. Important book which is well performed. Hopefully read by many doctors and policy makers.

Big Pharma exposed by a doctor.

If you could sum up Bad Pharma in three words, what would they be?

Capitalism and Health.

What did you like best about this story?

Dr. Ben Goldacre follows up his introductory book "Bad Science" with a more-detailed critique of Big Pharma.

Excellent insight from a doctor well-versed in prescribing and the frustrations of Big Pharmaceuticals hiding and manipulating trial data, not to mention having a stranglehold over regulators.

However, since Dr. Goldacre is a doctor, his solutions are limited in scope. He does not have a critique of the Financial power structures, where medicine is just one sector. He does not grasp that the Medicine system is working exactly as it is designed to do, it is working quite perfectly! It is designed for profit, and thus the oligarchs will continue to accumulate wealth regardless of the good and harm that results. This is Capitalism. Without a critique of Political Economics/Power structures, there can only be cheap band-aids and no structural fixes.

For a greater understanding of Political Economics and Power structures, highly recommended to read:

-Matt Taibbi: "Griftopia" (a very fun introductory read!)
-David Graeber: "The Democracy Project", "Debt: The First 5000 Years"
-anything by Michael Hudson, research professor of Economics and author of "Super Imperialism"
-George Orwell: "Homage to Catalonia" (classic!)

the best book on the topic

evidence based, passionate and practical, i now definitely going to change my attitude to reps and promotional activities